Now Singapore has entered the lucrative world of casinos - Monday 23rd of January 2006
Now that Singapore has entered the lucrative world of casino-resorts, what form should they take? Three writers reckon the island state can do much better than brash Vegas with subtle Asian style.
VEGAS, baby, Vegas! The line from the 1996 movie Swingers sums up Las Vegas in all its glittery, ticky-tacky glory.
No wonder then that it drew 41.4 million visitors last year, not just gamblers, but also plenty of families and businessmen attending conventions.
Now that the Singapore Government has given the go-ahead for two integrated resorts (IRs) incorporating casinos, the question arises as to what exactly will be included in these mega-complexes.
Gaming, it has been emphasised, will take up only 3% to 5% of the floor space.
Vegas provides an instructive example of whats possible. The mother of all casino hotspots since 1941 has not aged but has continually refreshed its appeal with non-casino draws.
There are family-friendly resorts like Circus Circus and Treasure Island, and attractions like Freemont Street Experience, a stunning state-of-the-art light and laser show unfolding over five blocks of glass-enclosed streets.
It is an entertainment capital, boasting star fixtures like Celine Dion and Cirque du Soleil.
It has even got hip quotient, thanks to sleek new resorts like Rio and The Palms which attract megawatt revellers like J. Lo and Matt Damon known as much for their happening clubs as for gambling.
Vegas has even got culture the 7,660-sq ft Guggenheim Hermitage Museum. Okay, so the collaboration between two world-respected institutions, which opened in 2001, has sloppily-curated, second-string exhibitions. But, hey, it is a start.
Gamblers pour an estimated US$8bil (RM$30.4bil) a year into the city coffers. But the citys real income is doubled when revenue from hotel, food and beverage and other tourist expenditures are factored in.
That is nothing to sniff at. Singapores IRs can draw useful lessons, but instead of offering brash American neon, it should go for subtle Asian class.
That means the perpetual bugbear of Singapores arts and entertainment scene scarcity of talent is going to bite. Because the keyword is content, content and content.
Vegas willingly coughs up big bucks for top-drawer acts. Caesars Palace is not only paying Dion US$3.3mil (RM12.5mil) a year for three years, but it also built a US$95mil (RM361mil), 4,000-seat Coliseum auditorium for her.
MGM Mirages bill for its Cirque du Soleil show, Ka, added up to a US$135mil (RM513mil), 1,900-seat theatre and some US$15mil (RM57mil) more in production costs.
These numbers work out in the end when you consider that tickets in Vegas start from a pricey US$75 (RM285) to top out at a whopping US$225 (RM855). The latter incidentally is the price tag if you want to get up close to Dions gold-plated pipes.
The crucial lesson here is that if you have the star attraction, you can charge heavyweight prices because the crowds cannot resist big names.
So what the IRs here need will be arts and entertainment extravaganzas on a par with these attractions, but with an Eastern bent and Asian talent.
Instead of a carbon copy of Treasure Island on Sentosa, how about a wuxia-themed resort with a show choreographed by Matrix maestro Yuen Wo Ping?
Rather than think Western draws like Dion and Cirque du Soleil, why not build a theatre, and a show, around say J-pop idol Ayumi Hamasaki, Taiwan boyband F4 or even Hong Kong legend Sam Hui?
Asia is also an untapped well for performing arts troupes with the potential to offer novel world-class acts.
Japans crowd-pleasing dance troupe, the Condors, for example, could be an arthouse crossover on a par with Vegas popular Blue Man Group.
Jacky Cheungs celebrated musical Snow.Wolf.Lake could be a permanent big-ticket draw.
How about Vietnamese water puppets and Indonesian wayang kulit? After all, Broadways The Lion King uses puppets to great success.
It would not hurt either to commission the best of Asias architectural talents to build something that would rival Frank Gehrys Bilbao Guggenheim.
Tokyos Shigeru Ban and Yoshio Taniguchi, who reconceived New Yorks Museum of Modern Art, are talents who could probably dream up something outrageous to put Singapore on the architectural map.
To recap, the additional attractions need to be polished world-class draws. In other words, no half-hearted tourist trap scenarios like, say, Igors dinner theatre offerings.
Approving IRs is only the first roll of the dice.
By taking to heart the lessons other destination resorts have to offer, Singapore can load the dice in its favour.
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