Crown Resorts Chief Executive Rowen Craigie says Australia’s federal and state governments and the private sector need to do more to grow Chinese visitation and fully capitalize on a market currently worth A billion in economic value to the country.
Australia currently hosts about 700,000 annual visitors from China, but “If Australia doesn’t get its act together it won’t capture a market share it otherwise would,” he warned business leaders and public officials attending a recent conference in Melbourne dubbed China’s Century.
Despite the common message that Australia is a nearby regional destination for the Chinese, Craigie said distance still finds the country falling behind more favored locations such as Hong Kong and Singapore. He proposed simplifying the visa system for Chinese visitors and making it available online and in dual language. He also criticized the condition of the country’s airport arrival areas and tourism industry training and said state governments need to be more competitive in terms of gaming regulations and tax structures.
“I think the federal government does have an appreciation that we are in an intensely competitive environment in which hundreds of countries are looking at the same tourism prize,” he said.
Crown, which is controlled by billionaire James Packer, operates gaming resorts in Melbourne and Perth and is looking to boost its share of China’s high roller market with a luxury resort planned for Sydney and an intensive lobbying effort to win a new casino license authorized in the Queensland capital of Brisbane. Rival Echo Entertainment, Brisbane’s incumbent operator, is also bidding for the license, as are two Chinese groups—Hong Kong-based Far East Consortium, a joint venture including retail giant Chow Tai Fook, and state-owned property developer Greenland Investment, based in Shanghai.
Queensland is awarding three casino licenses in all and has tentatively approved Hong Kong billionaire Tony Fung’s Aquis group for a megaresort on its north coast near the Great Barrier Reef and a similarly expansive mixed-use resort in Gold Coast backed by a Chinese group called ASF Consortium.
