Inside Asian Gaming

May 2013 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 29 country’s fragmented and famously corrupt bureaucracy. Ho Tram, which envisions US$4 billion worth of luxury hotels and leisure attractions at full build-out, has virtue in the fact that at least some of it actually exists. But the opening of its first phase—541 rooms and suites, a casino that will be country’s largest by far, with 90 table games and 500 EGMs, plus restaurants, shopping, a spa, swimming pools and other attractions situated along 2 gorgeous kilometers of white sand beach— ran into money problems at some point last year and now appears stalled somewhere in that labyrinthine bureaucracy. Asian Coast Development (Canada) Ltd, the consortium behind it (US casino operator Pinnacle Entertainment is a substantial investor), missed a performance deadline outlined in the original investment certificate granted by the government. This triggered a suspension by a syndicate ofVietnamese banks of the undrawn portion of the project’s credit facility. There has also been some murkiness surrounding the funding of the working capital requirement. Earlier this year, MGM Resorts International pulled out of an agreement to manage it. An amended investment certificate has since been granted, and ACDL has begun work on a second hotel and a golf course. As of this writing, no operator and no opening date had been announced. million visitors, 4.2 million of them leisure travelers, 1.4 million from mainland China, followed by South Korea, Japan, the United States and Taiwan, with Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia contributing another 850,000. The government is forecasting 10 million international arrivals and 45 million domestic travelers by 2020, when tourism is expected to contribute US$18 billion-$19 billion to the economy, equivalent to around 7% of GDP. Las Vegas Sands thinks either Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi would be an immensely profitable setting for something of destination scale if the ban on domestic gambling could be finessed. Genting is reported to have provincial approval for an investment of several billions up in Quang Ninh, close to China and the thriving resorts of Halong Bay. At one time, the Malaysian resort giant had its eye on a multibillion-dollar casino hotel on the South China Sea coast in the central province of Quàng Nam near the popular beaches of Da Nang. It’s reported also that the northern highlands province of Hà Giang on the Chinese border has endorsed a casino on the site of a massive tourism complex of 2.7 square kilometers proposed for a UNESCO- designated geological park that drew nearly 400,000 visitors last year. Vietnam’s recent history is also littered with about $10 billion worth of abortive gaming projects. Some were mere talk. Others were ground up in the COVER STORY 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 the World Bank. Per capita income has grown tenfold in the space of a generation. the World Bank. Per capita income has grown tenfold in the space of a generation. Since the start of the new century, gross domestic product has been expanding annually at an average of 6.3% a year on the strength of farming and oil exports, manufacturing, a growing technology sector and a service economy that now accounts for more than one-third of GDP. Not surprisingly, the country is a magnet for foreign direct investment, and a lot of it is finding its way into the leisure sector. Tourism generates about 4.5% of GDP and is growing by 11-12% a year. International arrivals were up 14% in 2012, exceeding 6.8 Ho Tram, which envisions US$4 billion worth of luxury hotels and leisure attractions at full build-out, has virtue in the fact that at least some of it actually exists.