As the growth slows in Singapore, the city state looks to expand its offering.
It’s nearly three years since the first casino opened its doors in Singapore and the city state’s two mega resorts are now experiencing something of a levelling off in fortunes.
Resorts World Sentosa and Marina Bay Sands opened in 2010 in a blaze of publicity and immediately hit the ground running, attracting large numbers of visitors and earning impressive revenues virtually from the off. Singapore very quickly became Asia’s second largest gambling hub in terms of revenues, behind only Macau.
But lately things have slowed down a little. The casinos obviously rely heavily on tourism and most of that comes from mainland China. However, the weakening Chinese economy has had an adverse effect on the number of visitors to the Singapore casinos.
Added to that, more stringent restrictions on the number of Singapore residents who are allowed to gamble had a similar effect. As a result, in the third quarter of last year the casinos experienced their biggest fall in revenues for over a year and a half.
Read the full article in the March issue of InterGaming.
