Responsible Gaming

The house position

The room on the mezzanine is a small part of a hotel, and the hotel is content to lose an evening's custom if that means somebody who should have gone to bed leaves the table. Staff are instructed in those words. Pay on the floor does not depend on what the tables take, no one is set a target, and a supervisor who closes a table early is never asked to explain it.

Strictly adults

Eighteen is the legal age in Switzerland, and the door staff enforce it without exception. Photo identification is checked on every visit, including for guests who have been staying for a week and for people the doorman knows by name. Anyone who cannot show a passport, a national identity card or a Swiss driving licence is not admitted. Adults who look young are asked every time, and the staff know that annoying someone is the smaller risk.

What the staff can arrange

Everything here is arranged by asking a member of the floor staff or the duty manager. Only what is needed to carry it out is written down, and none of it leaves the building.

• A time limit. Tell the supervisor when you want to stop and you'll be told when that hour arrives, once and discreetly, at the table.
• A spending limit. Name a ceiling for the evening and the floor will keep you to it, which includes declining to change any further notes for you once you reach it.
• A break. Say the word and you'll be shown out to the landing. Nobody comes to fetch you, and your place at the table is released.
• A quiet period. A door note for a week, a month or a season, after which you can come back as before, with no formality and no conversation about it.
• Self-exclusion. A standing instruction to the door staff not to admit you, made in person at reception on the ground floor, at any hour. Give your name and show identification, and it takes effect while you stand there. It is confidential and held by this hotel alone, so it is not shared with anyone else.

Lifting a self-exclusion is deliberately slower than making one. You come to reception in person, the duty manager records the request, and nothing changes for at least three months. It cannot be done by form or by telephone.

No credit, no cash machine

The house lends nothing, on the floor or anywhere else in the building. Staff will not extend credit, advance money against a room account, cash a cheque or hold a note to be settled later, and there is no cash machine on the mezzanine or elsewhere in the building. A member of staff who is asked for a loan says no and tells the duty manager, and nobody has ever been disciplined for doing so.

Signs worth noticing

Most people on the mezzanine spend an hour there and then go to dinner. What to watch for in yourself looks different, and it usually goes like this:

• Staying longer than you meant to, often enough that you have stopped deciding in advance.
• Going back upstairs for more money after telling yourself you would not.
• Chasing what you have already lost.
• Keeping the hours or the amounts from the person you are travelling with.
• Feeling mostly relief when a session ends.
• Letting sleep, meals or the rest of the trip bend around the room's opening hours.

Any one of these on its own means little. Two or three together are worth taking seriously, and it is better to do so here, at the desk, than later at home.

How the staff are trained

Floor staff, doormen and duty managers all take a half-day course before working the mezzanine, and a refresher each spring. It covers age verification and the documents that are acceptable, the signs listed above, how to approach somebody without an audience, how to carry out a limit that a guest has asked for, and how to take a self-exclusion at the desk. Reception staff are trained on the same material, since the desk is where most people ask, and asking is easier downstairs than upstairs.

How to ask

You ask in person, and that is intentional. Speak to the supervisor on the floor, the doorman, or the duty manager at reception. The desk is staffed every hour of the year, and behind it is a small office with a door that closes. The conversation takes about four minutes, and you do not have to explain yourself.

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