“Macau lacks the regular activities”
With business in a slump in Macau and VIPs harder than ever to find, Sands China has undertaken a roadshow of Japan in an effort to sell its services to Japanese travelers, companies and conventioneers, according to the Macau Business Daily.
A recent event at the Conrad Tokyo Hotel hosted 120 Japanese travel agents and corporate representatives who enjoyed a banquet, entertainment and a healthy dose of what the newspaper called “promotional activities.”
The event was the fourth in a series of 11 designed by Sands China to lure new non-gaming business to its resorts in Macau. “At Sands China we support the government’s vision of Macau as a ‘World Center for Tourism and Leisure’,” said Ruth Boston, the company’s vice president for destination marketing and sales. “This summer we will offer a variety of entertainment shows for all ages.”
Travel agent Atsuhiko Kiyonari told the Times that his company does “a lot of business with MICE organizers who are always looking for facilities that can host more than 1,000 people. Macau is an ideal destination in this sense. Also it is quite easy to get to, being just four hours from Tokyo, so I am comfortable promoting the city to my customers.”
But event coordinator Yuko Tokada, who visited Macau in 2007, did not agree. “I was not impressed. It was a bit of a disappointment actually,” she said. “I was staying in Hong Kong at the time and came to Macau for about three days. I remember thinking I should have stayed in Hong Kong.”
James Koh, a corporate executive at Amway Japan, may have summed up Macau’s dilemma when he said, “The location is great for entertainment and shopping, but it lacks the regular activities. You need experiences to offer. Seventy percent of our clients on these trips are repeat travelers; that means they are likely to have been on last year’s trip. So you need to keep offering them new things.”
That viewpoint is in line with that of the Mainland Chinese and Macau governments, which have ordered Macau to shift from an economy that is almost wholly reliant on one industry—casino gaming—and offer more in terms of leisure pursuits and entertainment.
