“Singapore is a beautiful, tropical country,” said one board executive. “There’s a great business community and a great banking industry, but we are a little bit boring.”
Sitting on the 28th floor of an uber luxurious hotel in Bangkok in mid-May, Mr Bernhard told the Bangkok Post that Thailand is facing a similar conundrum. The kingdom is already an attractive tourist destination, but it must act to avoid the industry stagnating.
In the past in Singapore, a businessman might have gone from the airport to a conference and then left as soon as he could afterwards, he said.
Today, however, he can bring along his family and make a weekend of it thanks to integrated resorts like the Marina Bay Sands Casino and the World Sentosa Casino.
These have a multiplier effect which encourages visitors to extend their stay and have helped turn Singapore into a regional hub not just for gaming but also family-oriented tourism.
Mr Bernhard said he believed Bangkok, if it follows Singapore’s example and invests in an entertainment complex, or even two, could even surpass it in terms of tourism outcomes.
“Bangkok has a critical mass of infrastructure. It has a world class airport. Bangkok alone, with two resorts, can surpass Singapore and become one of the largest gaming destinations in Asia,” he said.
Mr Bernhard, Vice President of Economic Development at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and Co-Founder of the International Responsible Gaming Alliance, visited Bangkok recently, meeting political bigwigs, economists, to encourage Thailand to jump on the casino bandwagon, and why it might have cause to regret the decision if it does not.
Although not officially working with the government, Mr Bernhard has been lending support to the Pheu Thai Party’s push to legalise casinos in the country.
Pheu Thai’s entertainment complex policy, along with its casino bill, is the administration’s most controversial idea.
In early April, the so-called casino bill drew protests as the Paetongtarn Shinawatra Cabinet was seen as trying to rush the bill through a reading in parliament.
As a result, Pheu Thai said it would postpone the bill for further work. It has yet to withdraw or suggest revisions to the draft.
Central to the argument against the megaproject is a lack of justification for the scale of its plan. The entertainment complex bill visualises a mega resort, a new man-made attraction, which can draw tourists to the country all year round regardless of the season.
The complex is likely to contain a shopping mall, a water park, a theme park, conference hall, hotel, concert theatre and other amenities.
The gaming area will account for just 10% of the whole structure. And to prevent it from becoming another gambling den, visitors will have to register and pay an entry fee. Thai visitors must have a B50 million deposit for at least six months to gain an entry.
Critics are not convinced. Opposition MP Rangsiman Rome has asked what regulations would prevent the new venues falling into the same traps as Myanmar’s Shwe Kokko, Kings Romans in Laos or Dara Sakor in Cambodia, where he said, “criminals run amok and crimes like money laundering and human trafficking have flourished”.
That’s the very thing Thailand must avoid, said Mr Bernhard, during his conversation with select Bangkok-based media outlets. Mr Bernhard said serious gaming operators prefer to work with an effective regulatory regime.
“The serious operators think Thailand is interesting and attractive. Serious operators want the strengthening of law. You want world-class operators who want strict gaming operations like an anti-money laundering law or know-your-customer law.
“They want to watch the dollars legimately spent, counted and taxed, to make sure it’s clean. The enforcement must be strict.
“The average person who has not been to one of these places imagines something different, when in fact a casino is a small part of the complex,” said Mr Bernhard.
Each global gaming company has its own business models and strategy.
MGM Resorts International, for example, is a broad entertainment and sports company, while the Las Vegas Sands focuses on a business tourism model.
“These companies need to diversify their portfolios. For example, if one revenue stream gets hit in Macau, there’s still Bangkok, and that’s a business strength,” he said.
Research scholar in economics Narongchai Yaisawang echoed Mr Bernhard’s ideas.
He said Las Vegas has comparable visitor numbers to Thailand at about 42 million visitors annually, compared to Thailand’s record 40mn tourists in 2019.
But a visitor to Las Vegas, for example, spends US$2,000 (B66,000)–$5,000 per trip mostly on the Las Vegas Strip alone which has about 25–30 mega resorts.
Thailand’s foreign visitors spend about $500 per head per trip, he said.
Mr Bernhard said the coming decades will be the most exciting yet for the fun economy, comprising tourism, sports and entertainment.
“This is the first time in history when more than 50% of the global population are middle class or above. In 10 years, two-thirds will be middle class.
“In the next 50 years, that number’s only going up, and if Thailand becomes stagnant it will lose out in the face of regional competition especially when we talk about the new wave of wealth emanating from Guangzhou or India.”