Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | 28 COVER STORY of entrusting a budding tourism economy to the effective control of travel policies dictated in Beijing is an issue the government will continue to consider very carefully. Reports in the meantime are that Caesars Entertainment has sent an executive to Kinmen, a Taiwanese island group in the Taiwan Strait but farther down the coast. Kinmen also has hosted Liu Yung Hsiang, president of Taiwan construction giant Howarm, who visited recently in the company of junketeer and casino operator Jack Lam, whose Macau-based Jimei Group does business throughout East and Southeast Asia. Half a century ago, Kinmen and Xiamen were lobbing artillery shells at one another. Today, a huge sign in gold letters against a red background stands above Xiamen’s western shore facing Kinmen: “Peaceful Reunification. One Country, Two Systems,” it says. Half a century ago, Kinmen and Xiamen were lobbing artillery shells at one another. Today, a huge sign in gold letters against a red background stands above Xiamen’s western shore facing Kinmen: “ Peaceful Reunification. One Country, Two Systems ,” it says. Do Son Casino Getting to Ho Tram VIETNAM T he Ho Tram Strip may be Vietnam’s biggest bet yet on destination gambling as an economic development tool, but it is far from the only one. The country is home to five legal casinos containing in total around 500 electronic gaming machines and upwards of 75 table games. They’re all located in tourist hotels, some of which, like the Crowne International at Da Nang Beach and the Do Son and the Royal Hotel and Villas on picturesque Halong Bay, are marketed to an international clientele and are quite luxurious. The border with China has proven another lucrative bet. There is a fairly new casino in Mong Cái in Quang Ninh province in the northeast, and one of the largest slot floors in the country is in a casino controlled by relatives of Genting Group Chairman Lim Kok Thay in the Lao Cai International Hotel in the northwestern mountains adjoining China’s Yunnan province, about 300 kilometers above Hanoi. Seventypercent of thepeopleof LaoCai live in poverty, most of themethnic minorities, but the province draws more than a quarter- million day-tripping Chinese a year, and that has enabled some of the more enterprising citizens of the provincial capital of Lao Cai and the nearby resort town of Sa Pa to grow rich off the cross-border traffic in goods, gambling and exotic Hmong and Dao women. There are another 740 or so EGMs in more than 20 clubs nationwide and a popular public lottery whose sales account for about 2.5% of gross domestic product. Pari-mutuel betting has been around for decades at a horse track in Ho Chi Minh City and more recently at a greyhound track about 120 kilometers to the east in the coastal province of Ba Ria-VungTau, where Ho Tram is waiting for the OK to open. Then there is the Internet, which is illegally devouring tens of millions of dollars, according to official estimates, a vast black market the government says it wants to shut down amid proposals that get floated from time to time for legalizing sports betting. The casinos and clubs are restricted to foreign passport holders. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam, like the governments of Cambodia, Laos and Singapore, takes a stern view of gambling by its own people, with the result that the country is exporting tons of revenue while reimporting the very social problems it wants to prevent. Along the western border it’s all the local police can do to try to stem an exodus of some 25,000 people a week crossing into Cambodia to patronize a notorious bunch of frontier gambling houses and cockfighting dens, and it’s Vietnamese who supply about 40% of the hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into Phnom Penh’s NagaWorld casino every year. Resort casinos capable of delivering tourists and their hard currency are a different matter. The economic liberalization of the last 25 years, the Doi Moi , as it’s known, has been a “development success story,” in the words of