Casinos in Point Edward, Sarnia and Chatham aren't going to be directly impacted by new provincial capacity restrictions, according to a spokesperson with Gateway Casinos.
Over the weekend, the province implemented 50 per cent capacity limits for venues with an indoor capacity of 1,000 people or more, including sports venues, entertainment centres and casinos.
Gateway Director of Communications Rob Mitchell confirmed that Starlight Casino Point Edward will be limited to 1,000 patrons, but he said the organization does not think the new measure will impact any of their three casinos in the area.
"We don't fall into the catchment directly, so at this point, we've not been told that it's going to impact us from a regulatory standpoint at the sites in Chatham and Point Edward and Sarnia, so we should be okay."
Gateway Casinos Sarnia has a maximum occupancy around 600 people, and Cascades Casino Chatham has the capacity to hold around 1,000 patrons.
Mitchell said Starlight can host around 2,000 guests, but he said in this climate, the site does not typically host more than 1,000 patrons at a given time.
"We've noticed some hesitation, but by and large, people are still going on with their everyday lives. With each passing day and with each new announcement, obviously some people are concerned, but for the most part, business has been fairly steady and we haven't seen a huge impact as of yet."
Mitchell said they saw a small dip in visitors when vaccine passports were introduced.
"There was a bit of confusion about what worked and what didn't work, what you could present and what would be acceptable. But now people have really grown accustomed to it, they've more or less adapted to the QR codes, so things are pretty good right now."
Mitchell said Gateway is cautiously optimistic moving forward despite the changing landscape. He said most people are double vaccinated and the province is moving very quickly to offer booster shots.
"So, I think people are growing accustomed to the fact that COVID is something that they're going to have to live with and I think they feel pretty confident and safe in our facilities."
When the province announced the capacity measures on Wednesday, Premier Doug Ford mentioned that Ontarians aren't masking as much as organizers implore them to mask in Ontario's largest venues. Mitchell said that's not been the case at all at their casinos.
"Our patrons have been terrific and we've had very, very few incidents of people that didn't want to wear masks -- a handful at best."
Mitchell said they're still obviously going to adhere to the same health and safety protocols they've always followed, including masking.
"There's still that high visibility of handwashing stations on the gaming floor and we're hypervigilant in wiping down the machines and so on, but folks have been very understanding and we're moving forward cautiously."