Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | March 2013 30 INSIGHTS Has that tailed off? The big peak in Indian visitation that occurred after the International Indian Film Academy awards were held at The Venetian Macao in 2009? No, we actually haven’t had a tail-off. The only challenge that we’ve actually had with India is that capacity into Hong Kong has been constrained over the past 12 months with the withdrawal of Kingfisher [Airlines]. So if we take away the capacity decrease into Hong Kong we still have year-on-year growth pretty much unchanged in 2012. India for us is our fourth-largest market. And seasonally, from May through to July, it becomes the third-largest market based on travel demand out of India. And so far, based on that, we’ve had to also increase our dining offerings. We now have a number of Indian dining offerings throughout The Venetian. Last month, we opened Golden Peacock to cater to that market. And we are the only integrated resort in Macau that offers Indian TV. Are there any other notable non-Chinese source markets? We continue to grow quite well out of Indonesia. We are seeing the greatest success in “twin-center” markets—those markets that combine Macau with Hong Kong. The “single-center” destinations are comprised mostly of air traffic from China, Taiwan and Thailand, where we see single-destination traffic based on air capacity uplift. Where air capacity is constrained or limited, we really become a twin center. And therefore we do a lot of promotional activities with two nights Hong Kong, two nights Macau. And our team’s key objective is to drive length of stay and increase the overall duration in Macau. It’s traditionally been two nights in Hong Kong and a day trip to Macau, hasn’t it? So you’re trying to increase that to two nights in Macau? Yes. So from Indonesia we are pretty much the sought-after destination to end their experience out of twin-center or tri-center with Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macau. Macau is traditionally the last stop, and we’ve done well in getting them to stay two nights versus one night from that market with destination package offerings. Obviously, Sands China has also invested a lot more in non- gaming amenities than have the other Macau operators. What are the major lessons from your non-gaming endeavors thus far? What works here, and what do people want more of? The key lesson that we’ve learnt is the difference that exists A 3D light and sound show was hosted nightly at The Venetian Macao lagoon over the Chinese NewYear period.