Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming August 2016 10 Cover Story last year to 4.2 million visitors, 12th best in Asia. RWS’s Adventure Cove visitation also grew substantially by 7.5% to 660,000, enough for 20th in regional water park rankings. “Resorts World Sentosa welcomed a total of 7 million visitors to all its attractions in 2015, accounting for a third of all visitor arrivals to gated attractions in Singapore,” RWS Senior Vice President of Attractions, Jason Horkin, says. “In the first quarter of 2016, RWS saw approximately 1.6 million visitors to all its attractions,” comprising Universal Studio’s best quarterly revenue and attendance, despite a year on year fall in gaming revenue. Genting plans to use the model in Korea, with a Heroes and Legends theme park at Resorts World Jeju, a joint venture with mainland China’s Landing International on the popular resort Kingdom was Asia’s most popular theme park outside Japan last year, ranking 13th globally and attracting nearly 7.5 million visitors according to the 2015 Theme Index from the Themed Entertainment Association and engineering firm AECOM’s Economics practice. “Competing in this space may not the best strategy for Macau given the possible saturation of theme parks in China with a pipeline of attractions.” The US$5.5 billion Shanghai Disneyland opened in June, forecast to attract at least 15 million visitors annually. Universal Studios is coming to Beijing with Six Flags and DreamWorks attractions on the drawing board. China’s homegrown Chimelong, OCT Parks and Songcheng Worldwide all rank alongside Disney and Universal among the world’s top 10 most popular theme park groups. “Why would I want to go to Macau for a theme park experience when there is a perfectly acceptable, internationally branded theme park an hour away inHong Kong?” asks Global Market Advisors Senior Partner Andrew Klebanow in reference to Hong Kong Disneyland. “Do you think my niece would find meeting a fluffy panda superior to getting a hug from Sleeping Beauty or Mickey Mouse? Oh, and that Hong Kong theme park happens to be one train stop from one of the greatest airports in the world.” One key reason behind Macau’s own theme park push is how successful they have been at Genting Group IRs. For decades, an amusement park has drawn customers to Genting’s Highlands resort outside Kuala Lumpur – and the property’s mass market appeal delivers juicy margins. Renamed Resorts World Genting, the IR is upgrading to a Twentieth Century Fox World theme park as part of its US$1.3 billion Genting Integrated Tourism Plan. Genting took the same model to Singapore with Universal Studios at Resorts World Sentosa (RWS), which saw attendance grow by 9% “One key reason behind Macau’s own theme park push is how successful they have been at Genting Group IRs. For decades, an amusement park has drawn customers to Genting’s Highlands resort outside Kuala Lumpur – and the property’s mass market appeal delivers juicy margins.” Macau’s Sands Cotai Central formed an ongoing partnership with DreamWorks Animation in 2013