Our Desk: Season of discontentment

Brook Yang

One late night when I was dragging a big suitcase towards the bus terminal opposite the Grand Lisboa, a couple of unsavory men gathering at the narrow walkway across the casino asked if I needed a loan to win my money back.
“It looks like you’ve gambled away everything, I can help you with some capital to win it back,” the older one suggested.
After I stated that I was no gambler, the man still made a series of inquries such as where I was going with a suitcase and if I lived in this town, as if he was not convinced.
His skeptical attitude trigered my speculations: Is this man a redundant casino employee as a result of the collective downsizing and closing up of VIP rooms? Has Macau’s “middlemen” business really hit such a low point that its once behind-the-scenes henchmen are now desperately approaching the general public? Or that the issue of problem gambling is so prevalent that young people or individual tourists are now a common group?
It wouldn’t be so unreasonable to make such speculations, since the past months have witnessed plunging figures, suprising events, and new market plans.
Local junket operators might look to other gaming destinations for alternatives, only to reopen the VIP rooms here when the market climate gets warmer. In the meanwhile, a portion of the local workforce on the gaming floors was forced to outflow to other sectors, due to staff layoffs and new unpaid-leave schemes.
A taxi driver I met recently said he’d newly joined the profession after being cut from a VIP room. The room was not shuttered, but its management intended to replace the locals with imported staff who would accept lower salaries.
While the industry and the government are expecting a revenue recovery pinned on the hopes of a tourist and manpower influx from the lineup of new casino resorts taking shape in Cotai, some former employees may not be interested in going back to serving on or beside a gaming table again.
What’s being taken away from Macau’s casinos are also high-betting clients and middle-class gamblers who are either deterred by China’s anti-graft clampdown or the stricter traveling rules to enter the territory.
Numerous reports have pointed the cause of the industry downturn at the Chinese Central Government’s campaign against corruption and money-laundering; some also flagged Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Macau visit last December as a signal of heavier strikes to be landed on the source of revenue.
That’s a major external force. For which I’d say there’s no doubt; except the head of the Chinese Liaison Office in Macau, Mr Li Gang, refuted the correlation in an answer to the media earlier this year.
But what about the internal forces? Isn’t the market downturn also revealing an inevitable evolution in the traditional operation model that’s perhaps no longer beneficial at a certain point?
The city’s old-timers might have lifted their eyebrows when hearing the news that a large prostitution ring was busted at the Hotel Lisboa in January, as the “all-of-a-sudden” action hit a long tolerated vice in the renowned casino.
Perhaps it’s time to shift some of the blatant business models, and to regroup old operation and administration strategies with revamped ideas and concepts.
Some operators have indicated an unstopable trend to shift the growth point from servicing high-
stake gamblers to bringing in mass consumers. Nevertheless, their attempts at introducing non-gaming attractions have varied in creativity.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”: It’s called the “adjustment period” by the government, or a “hibernating” spell by the junket operators. And how can you say we don’t need an upgrade in the sowing methods, before a fertile season comes again?