Singapore casino bidder may build convention center

Linus Chua and Yoolim Lee

Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005 | 9:37 a.m.

Singapore, planning a new resort that may include the city's first casino, has been approached by a group interested in a convention center and another keen on a theme park for the project, Trade Minister Lim Hng Kiang said.

The first group plans to build hotels and entertainment outlets with the convention center on a downtown site, Lim told reporters, while the second group wants to develop a theme park built on a resort island south of Singapore. The government has asked investors for concept bids due next month, and these proposals may include the casino.

The new development is part of Singapore's effort to more than double tourist arrivals to 17 million in the next 10 years to boost its $91 billion economy. The target also includes tripling tourism revenue by 2015 with more attractions and convention centers.

"We're going in with an open mind -- we're asking for concepts to look at what the private sector can propose and we'll make a decision after that," said Lim, who described both the convention center and theme park concepts as proposals that "fit in well" with Singapore's goal of drawing more tourists.

Singapore, where Focus on the Family and other religious and social groups have opposed the casino, will announce its decision on the gaming license after the concept bids are turned in. The license would be awarded after another round of bidding.

The city-state's plans have drawn interest from casino operators such as Las Vegas Sands Inc., MGM Mirage, Harrah's Entertainment Inc. and Macanese gambling tycoon Stanley Ho.

A casino would subsidize the convention center or theme park, Lim said, as both operations aren't very profitable. Without a casino, the government may have to subsidize both developments or even build its own convention center, Lim said.

Singapore, which is proposing a 10-year monopoly for the winning bidder, is also open to changing the rules and giving a gaming license to different operators so projects can be built in both the downtown and resort island sites. In the concept bids, the government is asking operators for a "sensitivity analysis" on how a second gaming license would affect their proposals.

"The government is not ruling out that there could be a second license," Lim Neo Chian, chief executive of the Singapore Tourism Board, said after a press briefing. "The government will make the judgment based on the sensitivity analysis studies from the companies."

Some analysts said most bidders would prefer to have more than one casino operator in Singapore to draw more visitors.

"If you just build one resort, that's when you run into big trouble because you won't have competition, and the operator would have no incentive to improve service and increase the overall visitation figures in the long run," said Jonathan Galaviz, a partner at Galaviz Ong & Co., a Las Vegas-based casino industry analyst. "The only way to get critical mass is to have more than one property."

He estimates Singapore's visitor arrivals are about a fifth of the 40 million tourists Las Vegas gets yearly. That means Singapore's tourism market is big enough to have resorts equivalent to a fifth of the properties the U.S. gaming city offers, he said.