Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming May 2016 24 of meetings to implement the processes. The first one we held was like a long-lost family reunion, with managers in different departments who hadn’t seen each other for years. It created quite a disturbance in their business. But amazingly it worked well. After the Grand Lisboa they assigned me to open the Ponte 16, then l’Arc and the Oceanus, and ultimately pre-development for the Lisboa Palace. SJM weren’t really crazy about meetings, or emails or continuous SOPs. With American companies you have meeting overload, a thousand emails backing up, and everything written in policies, procedures and SOPs. For the Chinese it’s very much a family approach, with different members responsible for different branches of the business, although to a small extent this existed in Adelson’s empire as well. Can a balance be struck between the American and Chinese way? I think Galaxy has a combination of east and west that’s more succinct and tight than others. IAG: You’re now into your second decade in Macau, so you’ve seen a lot of changes here. Which have stood out the most to you? NM: Property prices here are outrageous now. You can buy a castle in Europe for the price of a two bedroom apartment in Taipa. It’s causing a problem for locals. Of course I wish I’d bought in earlier. When I first came there were about six restaurants I liked and at the end of the month you were starting again at number one. There are a lot more options now, not just for food but entertainment as well. That makes life here more tolerable. Industry profile they can’t do in China is gamble. If we want to diversify beyond gaming we’ve got to give them something more luxurious, or better value for money than they can’t get back there, or something unique and spectacular. Quite frankly there’s nothing I see that we’re doing here that they can’t get in Guangzhou, Beijing or Shanghai. I stayed at the Mandarin Oriental in Guangzhou, which is absolutely fantastic. Many properties there are amazing, with restaurants that are much more in tune with Chinese tastes. IAG: What about Asian gaming outside of Macau. There’s Entertainment City in the Philippines, new developments in South Korea, and Japan always gets mentioned. New regulation might be coming to Cambodia and Vietnam and even Australia is drawing mainland Chinese visitors. Should Macau be worried? NM: I think a lot will depend on China, which controls where its people can go. For the mass end of the market I don’t think Macau will have to worry because of its proximity to the mainland. But at the higher end you’re seeing VIPs go further afield. In Saipan, for example, Chinese can get visas on arrival. IAG: You’ve now got the PREM1ER wine and spirits importing company and the PREM1ER bar and lounge in Taipa. What led you to starting this business and how does the business fit in to Macau’s hospitality industry? NM: From 2004 on, when I called in distribution companies I saw they had nice standard product, but nothing that would allow an outlet to stand out as exceptional. We started by looking at prize winners in international contests at the big shows in places like London and San Francisco. Now we aim for the best of the best, produced by independent artisanal suppliers like Haswell which produces an exceptional London Dry Gin, or Dictador which produces excellent Columbian rum. Our products can be found in places like the Macallan Whisky Bar in Galaxy, Vida Rica Bar at the Mandarin Oriental and Pacha Club at Studio City. Sands asked me to come and help with their first casino here ... It was a difficult assignment because the managers in place had been recruited from Asian properties in the likes of Cambodia and Laos … Among the 50 Las Vegas managers we brought in to pull them up to standard, 27 did not yet have a passport. So there were huge cultural differences and we had to get the two sides talking to each other. IAG: We’re seeing a paradigm shift in Macau from a VIP-dominated market to a mass-dominated market. What’s your take on the future of gaming in Macau over the next five or ten years? NM: The Macau government talks about diversifying beyond gaming like the Saudis talk about reducing their reliance on oil. But the only thing Chinese can do in Macau that The Macau Sands opens in 2004