Inside Asian Gaming

June 2016 inside asian gaming 7 Cover Story leaders who in the past were untouchable. But it worked. People started saying, “Wow, this guy is serious.” Suddenly through those examples, all the corruption started to change and a lot of that money that found its way to Macau suddenly dried up because no one wanted to be seen to be here spending money. Even if it was legitimately made in the past through property development and that kind of thing – maybe favors were granted because you knew certain officials – if you made a fortune in the real estate market you didn’t want to show your money because if someone looked into how it was all made, maybe there were grey areas. I believe that the change taking place has really helped Macau and China tremendously in the long term. I mean, China’s rule of law works, you can think of doing business and attract companies with confidence, you can sue someone now under the rule of law and all of that is making China much stronger. Macau itself has also grown up too. There has been a slowdown but even with the slowdown life is good. Think of it like winning the lottery – you don’t win the lottery every time you buy a ticket. The operators won the lottery for a large number of years here. Now with the slowdown the market has normalized. Macau has had to readjust to the new norm and the numbers are not what they were but they are still very good. They are still better than Las Vegas. IAG: I think everyone would have taken these numbers if you had offered them 10 years ago and said this was what you would make in 2016. AZ: Absolutely. There are no businesses in the world that for this kind because they had already committed to these new mega-resorts. They thought they had died and gone to heaven and that this would continue, so they put back a lot of the profits they had made. That’s the problem we face in these next few years with the mega-resorts opening and the slowdown in visas and tourists coming to Macau. This is a time that the operators will really have to perform. They have to go back to work through service, events and different kinds of attractions to make Macau a better place. There are a large number of rooms coming on stream so rather than everyone fighting each other, the strong will survive as in any business. IAG: We’ve seen Korea enjoy a wonderful surge on the back of creative industries, which was government lead, but the problem in Macau is that our government is perhaps not as inspirational as the Korean Government. I also know that there is a great resistance to change in Macau. How, as businessmen in Macau, do we get the government to create a master vision? AZ: The important thing – and I understand exactly what you’re saying – is getting together with some of the people and working out a plan. They always say a picture is worth a thousand words so developing a plan of what Macau will look like in five years from now and 10 years from now. It’s like I did with Ocean Park in Hong Kong – it was an old park that was falling apart and the government asked me to assist. I took a traditional park and thought world class – how it could be Dr Zeman transformed Hong Kong’s Lan Kwai Fong district in the 1980s This is a time that the operators will really have to perform. They have to go back to work through service, events and different kinds of attractions to make Macau a better place. There are a large number of rooms coming on stream so rather than everyone fighting each other, the strong will survive as in any business. of investment make that kind of return. So there is nothing wrong, you just got spoiled before both with retail and with gaming because there was easy money in the system. IAG: The problem for the operators though is that then they made all those second round commitments? AZ: That’s the problem. The crackdown came at the wrong time