An Online Casino Guide for Tourists to the UK

Posted by Harry Kane on Wednesday, June 24, 2020

The UK is renowned for being home to a number of beguiling tourist hotspots, from Stonehenge and the iconic Tower of London to The British Museum and even the quaint Chester Zoo!

Aside from deciding which of these landmarks to visit during their stay, there’s also a question about how tourists should consider spending their time when they unwind at their hotel at the end of a long, adventure-packed day.

One option is for tourists to frequent an online casino site, but given the packed and competitive nature of the UK market, it can be hard to find a reputable operator that offers a safe and rewarding experience. So, here’s our tourist guide to online casinos in the UK, and a detailed insight into what to look for as an overseas player.

1. Understand Who to Trust in the UK Market

Let’s start with the basics; as iGaming regulations vary wildly from one jurisdiction to another in the current marketplace.

In entities such as North America and the European Union, for example, issues of legality and regulation are devolved to state and member nation level, creating a scenario where different jurisdictions place variable demands on operators and players alike.

Visitors from both regions will therefore be in for a surprise when they visit the UK, where iGaming law is passed at a national level and enforced nationwide by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC). This creates far greater simplicity and transparency in terms of licensing and regulatory guidelines, which is great news for tourists and even domestic players who regularly wager online.

As a tourist, your first port of call should be to ensure that your chosen online casino is fully licensed and regulated by the UKGC. This accreditation should be displayed on the casino platform in question, while this resource also includes a comprehensive list of operating and personal license holders currently active in the UK market.

Using this tool, you can simply search for an online casino and double-check its licensing credentials, helping you to distinguish between reputable and rogue operators.

Beyond this, you should also use an independent online comparison site to drill down deeper into what a shortlist of licensed operators have to offer players. These platforms review and rank casinos according to a broad range of criteria, including their real-time welcome bonus, quality (and breadth of customer service), available payment options and the number of verticals that they include.

Many of these resources also incorporate authentic user reviews into their rankings, enabling tourists to understand the first-hand experiences of similar players and the type of journey that they can expect with a specific casino.

Make no mistake; following this process can help you to find the best and most reputable casinos in the UK market, helping you to enjoy a safe, enjoyable and hopefully lucrative experience on your travels!

2. There’s no Software Downloads in the UK Market

Just as not all iGaming markets have been created equal across the globe, so too some countries have access to better technology than others.

Make no mistake; the UK is home to one of the most innovative and tech-led iGaming markets in the world, thanks largely to the region’s advanced regulatory climate, sustained investment by the biggest players and liquidity sharing between individual operators.

This is borne out by the technology that underpins the best online casino platforms, which is now driven by advanced Flash Player technology and the HTML5 programming language. These responsive technologies enable players to access their favourite platforms and games seamlessly across both desktop and handheld devices, in most instances through a standard or mobile browsers.

These technologies also negate the need to download additional software before playing online, which introduces an additional layer of safety and security for players.

The main reason for this is that software downloads may be completed through unverified third-party platforms, which could be riddled with hidden viruses and worms that have the capacity to skim sensitive information from devices (including usernames, passwords and even financial data).

In this respect, the removal of third-party downloads has benefited both players and operators directly, while also making games accessible instantly and in a way that doesn’t compromise on your device’s existing memory.

Of course, most casinos now operate native mobile apps across both Android and iOS platforms, and you will need to download these onto your smartphone (or tablet) through Google Play and the App Store respectively.

However, this type of download is both secure and completed through a reputable source, while you only need to undertake this process once before accessing your favourite games indefinitely.

If you do visit from abroad and land on a casino platform that does ask you to download additional or third-party software, we’d recommend double-checking the site’s viability and licensing details.

3. Be Wary When Selecting a Viable Payment Method

If you are going to wager in the UK as an overseas visitor, you should definitely tread carefully when processing payments and choosing a preferred transaction method.

If you end up playing at a casino where your native currency isn’t accepted, you should also take the time to recalculate your bankroll by converting this into British pounds (GBP). This ensures that you don’t get caught out by real-time exchange rate movements, while creating a scenario where you wager comfortably within your existing means.

When you visit a potential casino site in the UK, you’ll certainly see a vast array of currencies and online payment methods on offer. However, many of these will be different to those available in your country of origin, with only a select few universally accessible across the globe.

Where possible, we’d definitely recommend choosing a familiar payment method (and currency) where possible, while also prioritising one that offers the best possible level of security.

Of course, the best and most reputable casinos should already offer 128-bit SSL encryption that safeguards your personal data and transactions, but subsequently selecting a certified and secure payment option will introduce an additional layer of safety.

Bank transfers tend to be the most security, although this option is not widely available and can take up to five working days to process payments. At the same time, debit cards can offer both convenience and security, but you may want to wager responsibly using a set of funds that has been diverted from your current or savings account.

With these points in mind, secure e-wallets like PayPal may offer the best overall value, with this platform used internationally, free to use and capable of processing instantaneous transactions in a safe and secure manner.

You should also note that you can no longer use specific payment systems to wager in the UK market, with the regulator having banned this process officially on April 14th. So, it’s important to manage your payment options with this regulation firmly in mind.

4. Customer Support – Finding the Best and Most Helpful Platforms

As we’ve already touched on, customer support is one of the key factors and considerations when ranking online casinos.

Solely from a player perspective, however, it’s arguably the single most important consideration, as customer service has a direct impact on your online experience and the ease with which you can credit your account, wager and withdraw your hard-earned winnings!

Once again, customer service facilities and expectations vary from one jurisdiction to another, while individual operators also offer very different experiences to players depending largely on their scope and resources.

But what are they key things that you should look for as a player? Well, one of the first considerations should be selecting an online casino that offers 24/7 customer support, which is usually accessible through a live chat feature.

Furthermore, this feature should be responsive and capable of resolving relatively simple queries in a matter of moments. It’s also important to note that many 24-hour life chat features are underpinned by so-called ‘chatbots’, which utilise algorithms to recognise simple phrase patterns with the help of conditional statements.

This means that you may need to direct more complex or detailed queries through an alternative channel, with emails also available 24/7 in most instances (albeit at the mercy of considerably longer response times).

You can review individual casinos to check their average email response time as a player, and this is definitely worth careful consideration if you want to register with a genuinely responsible operator that puts the player experience at the epicentre of their business.

In some cases, casino operators may also offer a domestic and international phone number to contact. This is great as a tourist if you wish to speak to a representative in your native language (be sure to check this with your chosen casino), but bare in mind that some landline numbers may charge you a fee as the caller.

If you do intend to raise your query by voice call, try to look for a freephone number, otherwise it may be more cost effective to use one of the free-to-action channels on offer.

Most sites also offer FAQs and similar, user-generated content to answer customer queries. Be sure to check these out before completing your registration online, as once again this may be made available in various languages and can provide practical solutions to your query in real-time!

5. Are Games Free to Play?

On a final note, it’s important to consider a casino platform’s full range of games and the number of verticals that it offers to players.

After all, these factors combine to determine the diversity and popularity of a particular casino, particularly from the perspective of overseas or casual players who want to experiment with a wide range of game libraries and different disciplines.

In the UK market, relatively new operators such as PlayOJO tend to offer the highest number of verticals and the widest selection of games, with more than 3,000 individual titles available to players across a number of genres.

As you can imagine, slots and table games dominate this number, with these verticals accounting for a combined 80.3% of the total GGY generated by UK operators.

While you may want to play at such a casino in order to retain access to a huge number of games, however, you should prioritise platforms that actively simplify the process of searching for specific games and verticals.

In general terms, you should be able to access a particular title or browse a specific gaming category within a couple of clicks of landing on the home page, while ideally the site will also have a search bar that enables you to look for a particular game directly.

It’s also important to identify platforms that present you with an opportunity to trial particular games (especially slots) for free. This is becoming increasingly commonplace in the modern iGaming market, which is more competitive than ever and compels operators to create new and inviting hooks to target brand new players.

With this type of feature, you can select your desired game and play for a few spins without wagering any real or hard-earned money. Of course, you won’t be able to bank any winnings earned during this trial run, but the process will at least afford an insight into the available gameplay and the type of experience that you can expect.

This can also help you to verify a particular slot’s return-to-player (RTP) rate, which is presented as a percentage and reveals the average amount of cash that you can expect to recoup for every pound spent.

For example, slots with an RTP rate of 97% are classed as low-variance and should enable you to win £0.97 for every £1 wagered on average, with this translating into a series of frequent but modest base game wins that can boost your bankroll incrementally over time.

Interestingly, licensed casinos in the UK are now required to publish the official RTP rates of specific slots and games on their site, so keep your eyes peeled for these and strive to ensure that they’re accurate. This should help to ensure the best possible gameplay experience, which can be hard to find when you’re wagering online in a foreign country!