“To make sure Taiwan has enough people to cope with the booming human resource demand, the government should set up an authority to check qualifications and issue job licenses for gaming staff,” Chui Jen-hsiung (崔震雄), a professor at Taiwan Hospitality & Tourism College, wrote in his blog.
Front-line employees working in the casino industry — such as dealers, cage operators and surveillance staff — have to take courses and get certification to gain qualification.
The college started to offer gaming courses last year to pave the way for the possible opening of casinos.
Despite these obstacles, Liu Day-yang (劉代洋), a business administration professor at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, remains upbeat about the prospect that Taiwan will establish a casino industry in Penghu or Kinmen.
Despite infrastructure problems with small or lacking airports and harbors on the two islands, he said, these issues could be easily fixed when international operators begin pouring in investments to enhance the facilities.
Even if a referendum were passed, it would take at least four years before a casino could finally open its doors to customers, he said, adding that this would buy Taiwan more time to observe and learn from the experiences of how Singapore and Macau fare in their gaming operations.
“We are so much bigger in terms of geography and we have many tourism resources that Singapore and Macau lack,” Liu said.
“To rival them, we must come up with one ‘killer formula’ that integrates our tourism resources into the gaming industry,” Liu said.
The establishment of a casino means more than just gaming facilities.
It could be an integrated resort with casino as the anchor tenant, but includes other facilities such as theaters for resident performances, luxury shopping malls, fancy hotels and star-rated food and beverage outlets, to name a few.
Marina Bay Sands in Singapore offers a perfect example.
Scheduled to open early next year, the US$5 billion integrated resort will feature two theaters with a total of 4,000 seats, large and flexible convention and exhibition facilities, a luxury three-tower hotel, a science museum and a shopping mall, in addition to Las Vegas-style gaming rooms.
On Oct. 21, the resort announced it would bring the award-winning Broadway musical The Lion King to its theater next September, marking the first time the acclaimed musical will show in Southeast Asia.
If the gaming industry is set up in Penghu, it could draw 5 million visitors a year to the island with tourism-related income hitting NT$50 billion (US$1.5 billion) a year.
Every visitor is expected to spend an average of NT$10,000 on gambling and another NT$10,000 on other activities, statistics from the Council for Economic Planning and Development said.
One casino license will help create 5,000 jobs, and a total of 30,000 to 50,000 gaming and tourism-associated employment opportunities would arise if Taiwan has a gaming industry, the council’s data showed.
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