Vast Complex In Siem Reap Province Will Include Golf Course, Shopping Center#
As Macau tries to get visiting tourists from mainland China to spend more time and money outside of the casino, Southeast Asian countries are taking a "build it and they will come" approach to attract more deep-pocketed Chinese gamblers to their shores. Recently, glittering new casino complexes have opened their doors in Singapore, Malaysia and Cambodia, all of them relying on the steadily increasing number of Chinese outbound tourists to fill their casinos in coming years.
As the People's Daily wrote earlier this month, casino operators through Southeast Asia are more overtly wooing Chinese gamblers through indirect sales and promotional activities routed through group tour organizers or junkets. Considering mainland China has no legal casinos, and Macau periodically imposes tougher visa restrictions, many casino operators see Chinese gamblers as something of a captive market.
Today, Reuters looks at one of the companies that's placing its bets on China's growing middle class becoming a key gambling demographic, South Korea's Intercity Group, which is planning to build a mammoth gaming and resort complex in Cambodia's Siem Riep province. This area, famous for its Angkor temples, attracts well over a million tourists per year, and with its $400 million casino/resort, Intercity hopes that Cambodia's relaxed visa policy (relative to Macau) and proximity to south China will be enough of a lure to attract Chinese gamblers who would otherwise head to Singapore or Macau.
However, rival gambling destinations have a little time to plan ahead: as Reuters points out, construction of Intercity's "Water Park" complex -- which will include hotels, a gaming centre, shopping and convention centres and an 18-hole golf course -- will start in October and the complex should open in early 2012.
The fact that so many new casinos are springing up all over Southeast Asia -- and that others may appear in China's Hainan province in coming years -- brings up an interesting question: what's going to make a particular casino or destination more attractive to Chinese gamblers?
The answer may lie in the gambler's background. One thing that casino operators outside of Macau know very well is that gambling among Chinese government officials is heavily restricted in Macau, but there are no laws limiting them from gambling outside of the country. We can expect these Party officials to be of particular importance to casino and resort operators in Singapore, Malaysia and Cambodia, and for these operators to market (and incentivize) accordingly, particularly as Beijing comes down harder on Macau city officials to be more vigilant.