Inside Asian Gaming

19 TouchTable MultiPLAY Roulette Talking Heads Yes, the flight time [to Singapore] is longer, but if you’re going to fly five hours or three hours, it’s not going to make much of a difference. There are six direct flights a day between Beijing and Singapore. And I think there are 12 between Hong Kong and Singapore. There are a lot of flights between mainland China and Singapore. I don’t think the mass market is going to change their behaviour—they’re all going to continue going to Macau, but I think the VIP segment is going to seriously look at Singapore as a resort destination. Macau still draws players predominately from neighbouring Guangdong province in mainland China. Do you think Singapore will be draw players more from other parts of China? Yes, I think so. The fact that they use Mandarin, simplified Chinese, is a great draw as well. Guangdong people coming to Macau will find it very easy, because it’s the same language [Cantonese], whereas if you come from Chengdu, or Beijing or northern China, where they actually speak Mandarin as their first language, Singapore will offer a much easier cultural adjustment. I do believe some of the VIP market in Macau will suffer. Whether it will suffer enough to have a significant impact, I don’t know. Will squeaky-clean Singapore issue licenses to the junkets that traditionally bring VIP players to the casinos? This is the million dollar question, and everyone is waiting for the Singapore Casino Regulatory Authority to announce how they’re actually going to license it. Nobody really knows. They’ve come out with one document regarding electronic gaming equipment standards, and there are some questions regarding the interpretation of that content. They’re saying local residents will have to pay S$100 for 24-hour access to the gaming floor. That’s what they’ve said, but they haven’t actually come out with a definitive statute saying this is exactly what’s going to happen. And the same goes for the junkets. Are they [the junkets] going to be licensed? How is that going to affect the VIPs? Will the junkets have to provide a client list? And money reporting, and all these things. KnowingSingapore, I think theyprobably will require the junkets to be licensed. But there are also very strict confidentiality laws here. So it will be interesting to keep an eye out on the amount of exchange between the Singapore government and the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government. Do you assume the Singapore government would keep information about VIP players more private than the Macau government, which could be pressured more to share the information with the Chinese government? Correct. That’s a gut feeling, but yes, that’s what I’m saying. The risk of exchange of information betweenMacau and Beijing is far greater than the risk between Singapore and Beijing. Apart from attracting some VIP players away from Macau, where will the bulk of players at Singapore’s integrated resorts come from? Apart from the local clientele—and let’s