The rising tide of Chinese visitors to Las Vegas isn’t sitting well with frontline casino staff who rely on tips to supplement their meagre salaries.
Earlier this month, China’s Hainan Airlines began the first direct flights between Vegas and Beijing, following the US Department of Transportation signing off on the plan in September. China accounted for 16% of Vegas visitors in 2015 but Vegas is keen to boost this figure, given that Chinese tourists are notoriously big spenders.
That is, unless you’re talking about spending on tips for hotel, restaurant and casino staff. According to a 2016 Mastercard survey, China ranks fourth among Asia-Pacific countries that don’t get the whole tipping thing. Travel research site Wanderbat.com said Chinese tourists typically only tip around 5%, and only in cases where the service is exceptional.
Several Vegas casino staffers offered horror stories to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, with one waiter noting that she’d been tipped a dollar per person on a $200 check, and since the servers are obligated to kick back to the other service staff, she ended up paying her co-workers out of her own pocket.
Joseph Carbon, head of the Transport Workers Union’s gaming division, said most casino croupiers rely on tips for as much as 80% of their takehome pay, and thus Vegas’ new emphasis on drawing more Chinese tourists could leave casino dealers searching for second or third jobs to make up the difference.
The clash of cultures has led to suggestions that work needs to be done to educate Chinese guests as to the expectations of US service personnel. But neither the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority nor the casinos contacted by the LVRJ expressed enthusiasm for making Chinese guests’ visits to Vegas more expensive.
There’s also the fact that the US is an admitted global outlier in terms of tipping expectations, and that maybe, just maybe, the casinos, hotels and restaurants ought to pay their staff a living wage rather than shift that burden onto the venues’ (already) paying guests.
