City aims to be fun for all the family

The game has changed in Macao. The world's largest gambling center has undergone a painful transformation, with new resorts on the Cotai Strip betting big on the idea that it can be Asia's version of the Las Vegas Strip.

Casino operators have been desperate to sustain the decadelong red-hot growth in the aftermath of Beijing's clampdown on corruption and extravagance. They hope new casinos with more nongaming attractions will breathe life back into the Macao economy.

Melco Crown's Studio City, for instance, made its debut last year as a Hollywood-inspired gambling and entertainment complex with a Batman virtual reality ride and a Ferris wheel. US billionaire Sheldon Adelson's Parisian Macao, which opened recently, features a half-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower.

"A casino is a passive business and only about gambling. It's just a superficial and inaccurate description of Wynn Palace and its rivals' businesses in Macao," says Las Vegas magnate Steve Wynn, whose $4.2 billion lavish resort Wynn Palace opened last month with air-conditioned cable car rides and musical fountain shows as the highlights.

"What makes Macao wonderful is the diversity of hospitality attractions on the Cotai Strip. It's the combination of hotels, restaurants and shopping malls that lure people to come here," Wynn says.

The most expensive casino to date in the gambling mecca has some $3.6 billion worth of nongambling amenities, pointing to a big trend of reinventing the territory into an amusement park with more family-oriented attractions.

This all echoes the Macao government's determination to boost the share of the industry's nongambling revenues from 6.9 percent in 2014 to 9 percent by 2020.

However, pivoting to a new model of growth may prove a daunting task for the small peninsula.

The much-touted nongambling business model is nothing new and can be compared with new attractions on the mainland like the Shanghai Disney Resort, says Stanley Au Chong-kit, chairman of Delta Asia Financial Group.

Ambitious casino operators may go too far down the new route than what the core gaming market can accept, and customers may well not take to the family entertainment, adds Zeng Zhonglu, a professor at Macao Polytechnic Institute's Gaming Teaching and Research Center.

His view may have been shaped by the fact the world's most famous live spectacle, Cirque du Soleil, completed only three and a half years of its 10-year contract with Sands China before leaving Macao in 2012 due to disappointing ticket sales.

Despite the uncertainty, Wynn believes Macao's transformation is underway.

"Diversification of Macao is exactly what is happening here today," he says. "In fact, it's happening so fast that people tend to ignore it."

(China Daily Africa Weekly 09/23/2016 page30)