Between two worlds
‘City of Dreams’ is
what the world’s largest gaming (Casino) city calls itself. Today, with
28 million visitors (almost a million a month) coming to Macau (SAR)
China, it is touted as being largest area in volume of casino business
done in the world, over-taking the much talked about Las Vegas, USA. Its
main customer base consists of millions of Chinese mainlanders, people
from Hong Kong SAR (Special Administration Region of China) and hundreds
of thousands from the rest of the world
I am writing this column seated in a room of one of seven mega hotel
complexes that form a new growth area in Macau of which some are yet
being built. Don’t get me wrong, I am not here to gamble at the casinos.
I am here to speak at a seminar of the Pacific Asia Travel Association’s
(PATA) Annual Travel Mart and attend a series of meetings of the
association.
I did traverse through several casinos and shopping mall after
shopping mall displaying luxury branded goods, each morning and
afternoon to get to the meeting rooms from the hotel I was staying in
for several days.
The walkways are designed to take you through what was indeed for me,
a dream experience.
Macau known for Casino business. Pic.courtesy: Google |
A 24x7 operation is what it is called. The casinos or the thousands
of people gaming within them do not sleep. There is no indication if it
is day or night. They arrive in coaches from the airport, from the ferry
terminal from Hong Kong or by road from Southern China and go straight
to the air-conditioned complexes, exchange their money for chips and
begin to play. It is a hive of activity in each of the many halls. Many,
electronically operated one-arm bandits and the old style roulette,
black jack and other gaming tables are all busy with ‘get rich fast’
gamers and casino dealers fighting for supremacy. A fellow PATA
colleague walking with me through one of these halls said ‘It’s the
casino that always wins’.
At the meetings we discussed sustainability issues
in tourism including the need to maintain the earth’s bio-diversity
and noted trends that showed that tourism was doing good on the eastern
hemisphere. Delegates from Pakistan talked about the devastation that
country was facing as a result of the recent floods attributing it to
effects of climate change and called for support to revive its tourism
industry after things settle down.
Mega resort
The hotel I was assigned, courtesy the Macau Government Tourism
Office and PATA, only opened for business in October last year.
Until, 2002, much like the Genting Highlands of Malaysia where a
11,000 room exclusive gaming resort has been operating since 1971 for
international visitors and non-Muslim Malaysians, Macau was known as the
gaming capital of the Eastern hemisphere or the ‘Monte Carlo of the
Orient’.
Then it had only one Casino complex owned by a Chinese business
magnate called ‘The Lisboa’. Small in comparison to what is around
today, but large enough then to create an impact. In 2002, two years
after the handing over of Macau’s sovereignty to China, by the then
rulers the Portuguese, Macau’s new administration decided to expand the
casino concessions for the area, opening them to a few Las Vegas
companies.
The first to invest was the Sands Corporation of Las Vegas that
developed the Venetian Resort, which is where the PATA Travel Mart was
held. With US$ 2.4 billion spent on the 40 story, 3,000 suite type rooms
and over two million square feet of other spaces including the casino,
it is cited as the largest single structure hotel in Asia and the fifth
largest building in the world. Interestingly, its architectural design
resembles that of a Venetian religious complex with its domes reminding
one of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.
Coming back to places like Macau, where I have visited several times
before this; its modern phase of development, places me in a dichotomy.
I live in an island country rich with bio-diversity, heritage and
cultural resources.
I know that our future lies in making sure that we protect the
resources we have not yielding to the glamour and glitter of some of the
modern developments this dream world has to offer. Yet I think of other
Sri Lankans who may not agree with me and will want to seek the dreams
like everyone else to get rich fast.
While thinking about this, I came across the news that the 57th
Annual Session of the UN Conference for Trade and Development is taking
place in Geneva at this time. I remember the early days of the UNCTAD,
when it introduced concepts such as ‘Growth Vs Development’ and ‘Trade
Before Aid’ in defining a desirable future for the then developing
world.
Those concepts still hold in the context of what is happening around
us in the global economic agenda.
The US is moving away from a consumption driven growth agenda to a
exports led domain to get our of the downturn its economy is facing,
while China is seeking to enhance its consumer spending while finding
the right balance in its growth of exports to maintain its growth
trajectory as cited in the UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2010.
Toxic threat
At the opening of the UNCTAD session it’s Secretary General Dr.
Supachai Panitchpakdi thus stated “The multiple challenges now faced by
the global community can perhaps be summed up in one word: imbalances.
Imbalances in food, energy, housing and financial markets were
allowed to grow during a sustained economic boom, becoming increasingly
interdependent. ... despite the massive amount of public resources that
have been mobilized to deal with the resulting collapse, the underlying
forces have been left untouched in the aftermath of the crisis.
They remain a toxic threat to stable and inclusive growth and the
sustainability of the recovery”.
In Sri Lanka, as we launch our own plans for development of our
nation in the post-conflict era, there is much food for thought for us
not to get into any one of the extremes of two worlds we witness, but to
depend on our own design of our future, within the realms of these
worlds. |