Inside Asian Gaming

IAG JUL 2023年7月 亞博匯 34 COVER STORY long-term perspective. Long- term, the government really wants to see us grooming local Macau management talents to fill that void but short-term there are always going to be gaps that need to be filled externally. We are lucky because at this stage over 90% of our management category is local already. We have a large proportion of local talents who have been groomed over the last 20 years, and we have always adopted a very sophisticated and advanced talent grooming strategy so that many of them are now ready to step up. Some of the executive positions, where people left during the COVID period, have been filled by the local talents that we’ve groomed, and they have succeeded. Obviously with the development of non-gaming facilities and programs, we may need to recruit some people from outside of Macau. But hopefully as we go along, we will be able to train more people underneath these people. We have a very rigorous succession planning process so that local people are always underpinning the expatriates. AWS: Another government initiative is this idea of getting more foreigners to Macau, with the MGTO stating recently it wants foreign visitation to grow from 2.2% of total Macau visitation in the past to 10%. That’s a big increase given the perception that Macau is really just for Chinese and not as friendly to foreigners as other international destinations that are used to welcoming tourists from all over the world. Do you think such a large increase in foreign visitation is an achievable goal and what is Sands doing to attract more so- called foreigners? Dr Wong: Well, you can’t change something overnight. The fact is we have been very dependent on travelers from the Chinese