Our Desk | The Non-(Existent)-Gaming 

Renato Marques

The term “non-gaming” has been included for a while in the local vocabulary, especially among government officials.

The term, imported all the way from Beijing, seemed to be the Central Government’s response to the “need” to transform Macau into a World Centre of Tourism and Leisure, and aims to clarify that by ‘tourism and leisure’ they mean “family friendly” tourism and leisure.

Well, the fact is that it does not matter how many times we open and close the same textbook, it will always state the same thing. The same happens with “Macau Tourists.” It does not matter how many times we say, “we want more international tourists,” and “we want more culture-related tourism” and other jargon, the fact is our tourists:

Come from Mainland China, almost exclusively from Guangdong province,

Come to gamble, buy cosmetics and personal hygiene products, and gamble (did I mention the gambling yet?) and that,

Eventually, have to eat and we have been telling them we are a very good place to get food.

Looking at this phenomenon, most of the gaming concessionaires (which is not to say all) did the obvious. They built casinos, shops, and restaurants. Problem solved!
In my opinion, to treat retail shops or restaurants as “non-gaming elements” is as effective as using chewing gum to repair a punctured tire – it might hold for a while, but it is certainly not the right thing to do in the long run.

But, in reality, what is the obligation of the gaming industry to offer services other than gaming? The answer is simple: none!

Apparently, this “obligation” is about to change under the new gaming laws that the government keeps saying it’s preparing, although very little has surfaced about what would be included.

Still, (let me be a bit optimistic) I do think this would be a great opportunity for the Macau SAR government to clearly establish rules on so-called “non-gaming” and, furthermore, clarify exactly to what extent the gaming concessionaires are liable for regarding their (famous) corporate social responsibility.

In my perspective, I see non-gaming in a very simple way: tourists come to gamble, we cannot change that and we do not want to change that! There is nothing wrong in assuming this, the same way that there is nothing wrong with saying, “Let’s target the non-gaming (mostly) to locals.” Why not?

I know what you are thinking right now. How can the “non-gaming” survive just on “very few locals?” My answer to that is to “extend” the concept of “locals.” You see, instead of considering “just” the 600,000 Macau inhabitants, we should also include the “pushed-back” neighbors from Hong Kong. We easily come up with some 8 million potential (and easy) consumers of our “non-gaming activities.”

With this problem solved, (the who) and without “messing up” with our region’s most precious income source, we are left with only two more issues to solve. The what? And how much (幾錢)?

I think I am not exaggerating if I say that it has become a common practice in Macau in recent years to “offer too little at a high cost.” However, in order to have a sustainable non-gaming sector we cannot continue to treat people (locals or visitors) as idiots and we need to start to pay serious attention to match “what we give” to “what we get.”

The fact is that these “extended locals” make a living mostly from their work and they can only do “the extravaganza” of attending a show or some other kind of event once or twice a month.

In this sense, I think we need to stop leveling for the rich and start aiming for the “average (GBA) citizen.”

And do not get tricked by this; the “non-crazy rich” are demanding, and to attract them we must certainly stop copying what they already have and search creatively and critically for novelties. That should be the task!