Forbes – Macau’s metamorphosis from gamblers’ guide footnote into the global gaming capital booking seven times the casino revenue of Las Vegas has inspired countries across Asia to try their own luck. From South Korea to Sri Lanka, there are gaming venues and big plans for more. While every government wants to duplicate the dollar figures of Macau, the model most follow is made in Singapore.
Singapore awarded two casino licenses in 2006, following an unusually contentious pubic debate, with the goals of boosting visitor arrivals and adding what Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called the “X factor” found in New York, Paris or London.
True to its nanny state character, to catch its buzz, Singapore established strict criteria for casino development. It didn’t even want to use the word casino, creating the term integrated resort (IR) that’s become favored throughout the gaming and governing industries. Singapore set up a high stakes competition for each license, authorizing a single IR at a government selected site, with strict limits on casino size and requirements for significant non-casino attractions as part of the package.
Singapore also encouraged casinos to focus on high rollers, instituting a two tier gaming tax, 12% for high rollers, 22% for mass market play (compared with 39% for all in Macau). To discourage local play, and thus lower the societal impact of gaming, the government imposed a casino entry tax on Singapore citizens and residents, 100 Singapore dollars ($79) per visit or S$2,000 per year (per casino in each case). Nearly every government prefers that citizens of another country or state lose at their casinos, and many jurisdictions ban their own citizens from casinos outright including Vietnam, Cambodia and South Korea, except for one in a remote derelict mining area a harrowing three-and-half hour drive from Seoul.
