Two Winnipeg casinos have announced that they have decided to try out a four-month long pilot program that is going to keep the pair running around the clock gaming during the weekends, which is expected to increase player activity in the casino during the busiest part of the week for these types of venues.
This is meant to start out as a trial run to see how successful this will be and whether or not the casinos should continue it for a longer period of time once the four-month limit expires. As reported by the Winnipeg Free Press newspaper, both of these venues will start up the program on December 2. The casinos involved in this program are the McPhillips Station Casino and the Club Regent Casino, both based out of Winnipeg. They will open up at 10 in the morning on Fridays and will not close their doors until 3 am on Mondays.
Most casinos in Canada do actually operate on a 24-hour basis, at least over the weekends. According to Peter Hak, who is currently the Chief Executive Officer for the Manitoba Liquor and Lottery Corporation, this is going to put the two Winnipeg casinos in line with the casinos placed within Ontario and Alberta. Due to the success that has been found in other parts of Canada, there is a good chance that the temporary program will become permanent.
Hak mentioned that the operator is always looking at other casinos to see how they can improve their own services. If other casinos find success with certain programs, it’s a good indication that this is a market desire that can be filled in other venues. The two casinos will typically have a large amount of people hanging out around closing time on the weekends that are forced to leave, and so Hak believes that this new program is going to be met with a lot of enthusiasm. Since the people are already there, it’s not a big jump to get it up and started.
It was also described that both the Club Regent Casino and the McPhillips Station Casino both have peak traffic on the weekends. The Crown Corporation followed with Hak’s statement and agreed that there are a ton of people still sitting at the tables when 3 am rolls around, which is generally the closing time for the pair.
Despite the new program, alcohol will not be served past 2 am and the casino still plans on closing down for Christmas. They will be closed all Christmas weekend and won’t be opening until 10 am on December 26th.
The success of the program won’t necessarily be measured by the number of people that participate, but will instead be calculated based off the earned revenue during these hours. Obviously, the amount of players in the casino has an influence on this, but they want to be sure that people are active and not just hanging out.