Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | December 2010 34 Drawing to an End? Feature T he voice of one regional lawmaker does not a policy make. But the call last month by a Malaysian politician to ban his fellow countrymen from being given ‘free’ trips to Singapore’s new casinos and even to charge them for entry could mark a new and unwelcome development. It comes only weeks after the Singapore government banned the integrated resorts from providing free shuttle buses to Singapore residents. It’s one thing for the lawmakers within Singapore to pontificate about the dangers posed to their own people by gambling. It’s quite another thing when a lawmaker in a neighbouring sovereign country starts making threats against legitimate cross-border trade and freedom of movement for his own citizens. Were such a precedent to be set, it could push the hinterland for the mass- market visitors to the Singapore casinos further and further from the Lion City. But that’s exactly what Tang Nai Soon, an ethnic Chinese state assemblyman for Johor, the Malaysian province next door to Singapore, suggested on 24th November. He called for the Malaysian government to ask Singapore to stop its casinos from offering what he described as “free”trips to Malaysians. To put this in perspective, Johor Bahru, the capital of Mr Tang’s home state, Johor, is only eight miles from the Singapore border. Given that proximity, it wouldn’t be much of an expense either for independent tour operators or the casinos themselves to lay on free bus transfers to and from the casinos. It makes a lot of sense for the casinos to market to this population, given that Johor is so close and so affluent. It makes the third largest contribution to national GDP of all Malaysia’s 16 states, according to the Department of Statistics Malaysia. Johor also has a population of 3.4 million people— around 50% greater than the population of the federal capital Kuala Lumpur, 300 miles and five hours by bus to the north. Perhaps more worrying for Genting Singapore and Las Vegas Sands Corp, the companies that run Resorts World Sentosa and Marina Bay Sands, respectively, is that state assemblyman Tang also wants Singapore is called on to limit Malaysians’ access to its casinos A Resorts World Sentosa shuttle