Inside Asian Gaming

IAG MAY 2022年5月 亞博匯 74 FEATURES Inside Asian Gaming: Ken, it’s been a tough few years for our industry in Asia but we’re starting to see much of the region re-opening and preparing for life after COVID. What is Light & Wonder’s agenda during this process? Ken Jolly: Certainly we can see that markets are opening up all over the world, although I would say Asia is the market that is lagging the most in general terms. But when you look at the Philippines for instance, it is now open for visitors and casinos are operating at capacity. In Macau, visitation is still limited and the requirements for visas to visit from China are slowing things down in terms of the recovery, so Macau is currently at about a 30% or less visitation rate. In other parts of Asia, Singapore has done a great job with a very high vaccination rate, Indochina is opening up slowly – the recovery here is not as fast as other parts of the world but populations continue to get their vaccination rates up and borders are opening – so we’re starting to see a bit of movement in visitation. We think as the rest of this year goes by and things continue to open, there will be further improvement. IAG: Does that mean Light & Wonder is focusing more on other markets than on Macau this year? KJ: Most gaming companies would say the same thing. The focus was on Macau in past