Casinos will not be coming to China’s southern resort island of Hainan.
That was the word from Luo Bao Ming, Hainan’s Communist Party chief, and Wang Yong, the mayor of the island’s main tourist enclave of Sanya. The statement, part of a briefing at China’s annual parliamentary meeting in Beijing, lays to rest speculation about the possibility of licensing that arose last year after a government crackdown on a sweepstakes-style table games operation at a hotel in Sanya.
Casino gambling is illegal in China outside of Macau, which is about an hour’s flight from Hainan by plane.
Hainan has attracted scores of international developers in the past two years, including InterContinental Hotels Group, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and casino operators MGM Resorts International, Sun International and Caesars Entertainment, all looking to cash in on the boom in upscale tourism in the country. Sanya already has more than 200 hotels and an aggressive pipeline for future developments.
Through the first eight months of 2013, Hainan attracted more than 22 million overnight stays from Chinese travelers.
