Macau – the new casino heaven
After a recent report was made by UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organization), it turned out that in 2013, the Chinese casino heaven Macau recorded the highest number of visits from gambling tourism. During that year Macau had $51.7 bn by international visitors. That was with 3.3% more than the previous year. The Portuguese colony, that was the former winner, was placed fifth. The USA was first.
Macau is located in the only place in China, where gambling is legal. It is ruled by Beijing, under an interesting arrangement – ‘one country, two systems’. At the present moment Macau is in a transitional period, because the biggest part of the revenue, about two-thirds, comes from the so-called ‘VIP rooms’. This is a room, where the elite can make huge bets and this is done behind closed doors.
Also the president of China, Ni Jinping visited Macau in December and his visit there was to celebrate his 15th anniversary of its return to China. During that visit he called on the region to diversity its economy.
The report from the UNWTO, made the previous year, 2012, showed that Macau had 20 % raise in the gambling revenue. But last year, because of the market value of the major casino operators of Macau, $73 bn were crackdown shaves. There was a decade of raising growth for the casino region, so after a decade of growith that was the first year when a decline was recorded, with 2.6%.
Desmond Lam, associate professor of marketing, working at the University of Macau, shares his opinion that most of the executives, owning private businesses, were cutting down expenses. This was the reason why VIP gambling in Macau was affected. He also shared that gambling industry is growing too fast and can not be controlled so well due to that quick growing. But all the other ‘non-gambling components’, were performing really well.
According to the last results, there is a decline in the tourist arrivals to China, which was the top destination of that region, and the arrivals to Macau had a raise with 5%.
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