The mood in Macau may look somewhat sombre right now in the wake of China’s ever-broadening anti-corruption crackdown but one intriguing by-product has been a growing focus on alternative gaming destinations in and around Asia.
One project that has caught our attention of late is Tony Fung’s AU$8 billion Aquis casino and resort in Cairns on Australia’s north-east coast, with construction likely to begin next year pending final approvals. Our immediate reaction when the concept of Aquis – a mega resort boasting a massive 7,500 hotel rooms and an 18-hole golf course – was first mooted in 2013 was that Cairns seemed a very strange place to embark on such an ambitious project.
18 months later, little has happened to appease those doubts. Not only is Cairns a long way from China where Aquis hopes to source the bulk of its VIP players, it’s a long way from anywhere! This laid back tropical town sits almost 1,400 kilometres north of Australia’s nearest “major” city, Brisbane, and with a population of just 160,000 people – a quarter the size of Macau – it lacks the infrastructure most other destinations can offer.
And if convincing Chinese players to make the long journey to Australia isn’t enough of a dilemma, they would then have to successfully sell the virtues of Aquis over the 14 other casinos scattered around Australia – among them James Packer’s much vaunted “VIP Only” Barangaroo project already under construction in Sydney.
In fact, when we were weighing up the pros and cons of building a mega resort in Cairns of all places, we could only think of two obvious benefits of Fung’s concept. Firstly Cairns is at least a few hours closer to China than Sydney and Melbourne and secondly that Fung would no doubt have a healthy database of VIP players he could access directly due to his business interests in Hong Kong and Macau.
But could Aquis also fall on its feet, so to speak, as a result of China’s recent crackdown? Fung said in an interview late last year that he would only need to lure away a small percentage of Macau’s VIP market for Aquis to be a success and those plans have now received a huge boost with many of those VIPs now actively looking at alternatives outside of Macau. Could good old-fashioned dumb luck – simply being in the right place at the right time – ultimately make Fung’s hand a winner?
Time will tell and we’ll be keeping a close eye on this intriguing project if and when it finally comes to fruition.
