Casino smoking and boosting in-person gambling are among challenges for Atlantic City in 2024

ATLANTIC CITY, New Jersey — After confetti is removed and empty champagne bottles are recycled in Atlantic City, 2024 will bring numerous potential challenges and opportunities for the East Coast gambling resort.

The hottest topic for Atlantic City in the new year will likely be whether state lawmakers approve a measure to ban smoking in all nine casinos.

High-profile anti-crime and pedestrian safety measures should show whether they do, in fact, work. A new $100 million indoor water park at the Showboat Hotel will have its first summer season.

And brick-and-mortar casinos will be watching to see if players continue to more widely embrace online gambling and sports betting at the expense of doing so in person inside casinos.

Jane Bokunewicz, director of Stockton University’s Lloyd Levenson Institute, which studies Atlantic City’s tourism and gaming market, believes a return to more normal patterns could occur in 2024 after pandemic-related disruptions.

“There are several reasons to be optimistic going into 2024,” he said. “With recent gains in the stock market and a stabilization of inflation, consumer confidence may be improving, which could lead to increased spending on travel and entertainment.”

He said recent wage increases for casino and hotel workers have somewhat alleviated the labor shortage.

And while Internet gambling continues to grow, non-gambling attractions, such as the Showboat water park and the new Dave and Busters arcade, bar and restaurant, should help attract new visitors to the resort, he said .

Mark Giannantonio, president of Resorts Casino and the New Jersey Casino Association, said the industry is optimistic about Atlantic City’s prospects in the new year “as we further transform Atlantic City into the premier regional gaming and gaming destination.” tourism”.

This will mark the fourth year of a sustained effort to close a loophole in the state’s public smoking law that specifically exempted casinos from smoke-free workplaces. Despite growing support — most of the state Legislature has signed on as a cosponsor and New Jersey’s governor promises he will sign it — the bill has been held up in state government committees without votes.

A December attempt failed when some lawmakers backed away from an outright ban in favor of a compromise proposal favored by the casino industry that would build enclosed smoking rooms in which employees would volunteer to work. That approach is vehemently opposed by many casino workers, who say nothing less than an outright ban can protect their health and provide them with the same workplace protections guaranteed to other workers in New Jersey.

Smoking is currently permitted on 25% of the casino floor, but those areas are widely distributed throughout the gaming area, with the effect that secondhand smoke is present and detectable even in the non-smoking sections.

“I’m hopeful that in the near future we will be in a smoke-free environment,” said Nicole Vitola, a Borgata merchant and one of the leaders of the initiative to ban smoking in casinos. “It would have been a nice gift this year.”

Other questions abound for Atlantic City in 2024: Will casinos be able to return to and exceed the level of business they had before the COVID-19 pandemic, not only collectively but at each individual property?

In terms of money won by in-person players, casinos’ key business metric, only three casinos earned more during the first 11 months of this year than during the same period in 2019, before the pandemic. They are the Borgata, Hard Rock and Ocean. Because money from online gambling and sports betting must be shared with partners, including technology platforms, and is not the sole responsibility of casinos, they consider money won by players at their own facilities to be their business. clue.

Will more players risk their money online instead of traveling to Atlantic City to do so? Internet gambling generated nearly $1.75 billion during the first 11 months of this year and set a new monthly record in November.

Will adding more security cameras make the city safer?

And will a highly dubious project to narrow Atlantic Avenue, the main road through downtown, from two lanes in each direction to one, reduce pedestrian accidents without paralyzing the city during busy summer weekends? or the big concert nights? ? Five casinos and a hospital are challenging the plan in court; a hearing is scheduled for January 26.

Atlantic City must undertake a government-funded beach replenishment project in 2024 to expand beaches that have eroded over the years. The loss of sand was so severe on the city’s north end that Ocean Casino paid $700,000 to have sand trucked to what little was left of the beach in front of its casino in May.

Individual casinos plan to reinvest millions in their properties in the new year.

Ocean will renovate 506 hotel rooms at a cost of $25 million before summer arrives. Caesars will open its Nobu Hotel project with 85 rooms and suites in one of the final phases of parent company Caesars Entertainment’s $420 million investment in its three Atlantic City properties.

The Golden Nugget plans to complete the first phase of a $6 million renovation of 100 rooms and suites.

And 2024 could be the year major decisions are made on an ambitious proposal to redevelop the former Bader Field airport property into a $2.7 billion automotive-themed housing, entertainment and recreation project.

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