Macau casino operator Sands China Ltd is to pay on January 18 what it terms a “discretionary allowance” equal to one month’s salary, to more than 23,000 eligible full-time workers.
The step was “in gratitude of team members’ dedication and contributions in 2022”, said the firm in a Friday press release.
It added that 99 percent of its employees would benefit either from a discretionary allowance payment or from the company’s sales incentive scheme. The annoucement did not say how much the firm was paying in total to provide such benefits.
In a message to staff, Sands China’s president, Wilfred Wong Ying Wai, said the firm had been “supporting Macau in any way we can through good times and difficult times,” and had been “dedicated to driving economic diversification and fulfilling our corporate responsibility to give back to the community”.
The penultimate reference was to the policy goal of China’s central government and the local authorities to broaden Macau’s economic base beyond gambling and tourism.
Sands China – recently confirmed as winner of a new 10-year casino gaming concession in common with the other five Macau incumbents – reported a wider loss in the third quarter as compared to the April to June period. That was despite a slight revenue rebound driven by better luck in the VIP sector.
The performance coincided with stifled market recovery under China’s recently-discontinued ‘zero-Covid’ policy.
The company runs Sands Macao on the city’s peninsula, and a collection of casino resorts in the Cotai district, including the Venetian Macao (pictured).
For a number of years extra payments to staff either at calendar New Year or Chinese New Year have been common among the Macau operators, irrespective of the actual economic performance of the operators.
