Between two worlds

By Renton de Alwis

Written in late September 2010, the article relates to a personal experience I had, of what now has developed to be the World’s largest Gaming Resort in terms of earnings. With a visitor volume of over 22 million a year, this ‘space wise little’ Chinese Special Administrative Region (SAR), provides an interesting model of how an area of little over four square kilometres has been turned to be an almost unbelievable extreme example of spinning money. Macau has created a ‘world’ of its own for satisfying the greed and lustful ways of the majority of human beings. While no attempt is made here, to either justify or condemn the efforts of Macau, it is presented as an interesting model for us to examine for tourism, where all the ‘damage’ from having large visitor numbers can be done restricted to a small area, while earning the hoards of money ’desired’ by economic and social planners in developing nations such as ours. This is not an endorsement of the model but a statement of what is available for us to examine. On the very aspect of casinos and gaming, this also should serve us as a reminder that most of us here in Sri Lanka and as a ‘nation’ sit in front of our TV screens each night to ‘gamble’ (play casino) on the many and various lottery tickets bought during the day from vendors from all nooks and corners of the country. The incomes generated also form a fair part of the revenue for the government’s coffers. Yet there is an overdose of hypocrisy looming in most of our minds when we are asked to examine such options, to ensure the conservation of our most valuable heritage, natural and cultural resources now used to generate tourism experiences for the progressively growing numbers of tourists. My suggestion is not to have huge numbers of tourists traversing the whole island, but to have the real discerning visitors (traveller tourists) go to our valued sites such as in the cultural triangle but have others who seek mere fun and enjoyment be contained in a smaller area called a RESORT. Planners may call this a type of zoning.

“City of Dreams” is what the world’s largest gaming (Casino) city calls itself. Today, with 28 millions 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.

 

No day or night

 

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 form 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.

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’.  

Call for support

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.

In a dichotomy

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 57^th 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.

Pix : From a Google image