Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | December 2008 28 such as noodles,” he points out. “As time evolves, we’ll look to upscale that and take it in a more fine dining direction.” Taubman, a company with more than half a century’s experience in developing and operating shopping malls in the United States is naturally focused on the retail business.Mr Hamilton stresses though that his company is interested in every aspect of the site, as this is the only way to deliver a successful resort to the customers and investors. Dedication “We sweat every detail. We are really passionate about our product,” says Mr Hamilton. “Integration starts before we even build the property,”he adds. “We are next to the Lotus Bridge immigration point, which provides opportunities for 18,000 people per day to come from Mainland China. It’s the only land crossing directly onto the Cotai Strip.” Whether arriving from the land border or via the ferry terminals and airport, tourist buses and coaches will be able to pull up in air- conditioned comfort in the property’s underground car park. People moving The site, trademarked ‘Where Cotai Begins’ will be served by the light rail system planned by the Macau government. The transport link was mentioned during the annual policy address of Macau’s Chief Executive Edmund Ho recently as one of several important infrastructure schemes to be funded in a 10.2 billion patacas (US$1.28 billion) economic stimulus package. At last estimate, the rail scheme is likely to swallow nearly half of that budget, and no construction date has yet been announced. Mr Hamilton is confident though that the project will go ahead. “The light rail system will be capable of 16,000 people movements per hour,” he explains. “Next door to our site is one of the 23 light rail stations that will directly link the Cotai Strip with the airport, the new ferry terminals, and the Macau peninsula.” T he whole of theMacao Studio City site is designed as amachine for generating revenue, but one with a decidedly human face. The way to achieve this, suggests Richard Hamilton of Taubman Asia, is to make the space exciting, but also comprehensible and navigable. “We want to see the customer circulate through the property. To achieve this we need a property that offers the potential for movement,”he explains. “If we can keep customers in our property for an extended period of time, there’s a positive correlation between what they will spend in the property. To achieve this we need a permeable design.We need real integration and real efficiency of movement through the property. It almost creates a gravity effect. You now have a mall without friction and without resistance,”he adds. Good and not such good design A good example of how the navigation issue can backfire if the structure for circulating customers around a property is too linear can be seen in one of Ikea’s home furnishing supermarkets in neighbouring Hong Kong. Ikea stores are usually designed around a ‘one-way’ layout leading through departments displaying large furniture to an area selling small household items, the self-service shelves and the cashiers.The idea is to encourage the customer to see the store in its entirety. This is different from a traditional retail store’s design, that allows a consumer to go directly to one section of interest. The problem is in some Ikea stores the one-way system is so torturous that customers will do anything to bypass it completely and get straight to the household goods department. In the Causeway Bay branch of Ikea in Hong Kong, this is achieved by taking a lift serving a next-door car rental office and car park and riding to the building’s basement. Although the lift is not advertised or signposted, a surprising number of Ikea customers have discovered it. Lines versus circles Although a leisurely visit to a Macau resort is a very different experience frommass market shopping in frenetic Hong Kong, Mr Hamilton stresses Macao Studio City’s design is about circularity rather than linear movement. “We don’t actually want people to move from the casino— we want to leverage off the casino. It is one of the best people generators available to us in the retail world,”he explains. “It’s a mousetrap that can perhaps only be compared to an airport, where people are held captive often for many hours once they’ve checked in,”he adds. Circulate to Accumulate Macao Studio City’s success depends on visitors being able to move easily around the site Macao Studio City