How to deal with the Greater Bay Area – Ashley Dudarenok

 

Ashley Dudarenok

Hong Kong is economically fast integrating with the rest of the Greater Bay Area (GBA). Hong Kong-based strategy expert Ashley Dudarenok looks at the challenges and opportunities at the GBA in an overview at the Macao News.

Ashley Dudarenok:

Whenever I look at GBA reports, it’s all economic statistics, the number of people, the number of output and all that. But we need to move to tell more compelling human stories instead of just manufacturing powerhouses and potential for integration within the region.

We need to talk about creativity. We need to be talking about lifestyle and real entrepreneurs. We could collectively host some very high profile international events. We could leverage more digital platforms to create engaging content, sharing day-to-day kinds of stuff.

Fostering cultural exchange – we definitely need to do that. Maybe create some GBA sports games, entrepreneurship fund or innovation centre that actually brings global community in those sectors to us. There’s just so much to do on both the marketing side, as well as policy and support side.

Why should someone do business in the GBA? 

First of all, it’s a massive consumer market. There is a world-class innovation ecosystem. There’s also a bit of access to global capital, especially for mainland Chinese companies.

Looking at where we are numbers-wise, it is very impressive. Our population is around 86 million people and when it comes to innovation hubs, we are at 75,000 high-tech enterprises.

Of course, global giants like Tencent and Huawei, they’re also based here.

But it’s also a financial gateway. For someone from mainland China, access to going global and global markets through the Hong Kong financial hub is important. Also our access to Pearl River Delta manufacturing facilities and the whole Guangzhou supply chain is also extremely powerful.

I think we have a lot of policy support and government involvement on all sides. The authorities are all very willing  to support. They want it to be the launch pad for the future.

More at the Macao News.

Ashley Dudarenok is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more strategy experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Foreign brands have to become more political savvy in dealing with China - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein

Foreign brands got into hot water when describing Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan as independent countries. Business analyst Shaun Rein explains at the BBC it is not only the government fanning the flames but increasingly nationalistic consumers who boycott foreign brands stepping on political toes.

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Are you looking for more strategic experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

What if gambling takes off on Hainan? - Sara Hsu

Sara Hsu

The debate is taking off on whether China would allow gambling on Hainan Island. Financial analyst Sara Hsu explains gambling would diversify the tourism industry on the island, but would also hurt the economy in nearby Macau. Two earlier efforts on Hainan were already aborted for political reasons.

Sara Hsu is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Are you looking for more financial experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Macau casino's: a legitimate target in the trade war - Shaun Rein

Not only commodities like soybeans and caviar can be hit by tariffs in the ongoing trade war, China has many more potential targets, like the US casino's in Macau, says business analyst Shaun Rein, author of The War for China's Wallet: Profiting from the New World Order, at Onlinepoker.net.

Onlinepoker.net:

Needless to say, a trade war between the two economic powerhouses is likely to spill over into a number of different industries, with US owned casinos in Macau one area at risk from collateral damage. Currently, Macau has six licensed gaming operators with 41 casinos on the island, many of which are owned by US companies Las Vegas Sands, MGM Resorts and Wynn Resorts.

While US manufacturing and exporting interests in China are likely to be the first businesses targeted by the Chinese government during a trade war, casino operators in Macau could also be viewed as potentially legitimate targets ripe for retaliation. As Shaun Rein, China Market Research Managing Director, explained recently:

“It is possible they will ratchet up police surveillance of his [Adelson’s] Macau properties in order to spread fear among high rollers and even middle-class gamblers that they are being checked in on by the authorities. Or they will launch an audit of their books. Either way, a move could be viewed as having plausible deniability that the government cloaks as a crackdown on corruption or tax evasion, as they did against Lotte in China’s battle with South Korea.”

More at Onlinepoker.net.

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Are you looking for more experts on the trade war between China and the US? Do check out this list.

Bigger is not always better, also not in Macau - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein

Macau tries to stay relevant by opening six new multi-billion hotels this year alone. But business analyst Shaun Rein wonders whether that is the right strategy. Bigger is not always better, he tells the South China Morning Post.

The South China Morning Post:

Even by Macau’s extravagant standards, this all sounds wildly over the top, but is it perhaps something that the city’s predominantly mainland Chinese visitors are looking for. Shaun Rein, director of China Market Research Group, has his doubts: “Bigger is no longer always better. I think five or 10 years ago, everybody wanted to go to these over-the-top hotels, but what we’re finding right now is that people are looking for a different experience and more boutique-like hotels that have themes.” 

Enter The Parisian Macao. Targeted to open in the second half of this year, the US$2.7 billion French-themed resort will be Sands China’s follow-up to its Italian-themed The Venetian Macao that opened in 2007. This second Sands mega-resort will feature 2,950 guest rooms, a casino, meeting and conference spaces, a 300,000-sq ft retail mall resembling Paris’s Avenue des Champs-Élysées and featuring 130 boutiques and more than 10 restaurants, a rooftop terrace and pool resembling the gardens of Versailles, and a half-size replica of the Eiffel Tower with a viewing platform where guests can get a 360-degree view of Cotai... 

Not everyone is as confident that business models that were successful in the past will necessarily suit present trends and tastes in Macau. “You can’t just offer predictable formulas right now. You have to think clearly about what the Chinese consumer wants. I find that the casino operators don’t understand the Chinese very well,” Rein says. 

“The new luxury in China is not buying Louis Vuitton anymore. It’s about posting on WeChat Moments where you’ve travelled to. That’s the new luxury status. When we interview people, they [say they] like to go to New Zealand, Botswana, South Africa, France or Japan and share their photos. It’s showing their friends that they’re living the good life. It’s not about throwing down a US$1 million bet in Macau anymore.”... 

But going beyond the argument of traditional resort formats versus more innovative designs, will either concept be enough to generate more non-gaming revenue and revive Macau’s flagging fortunes? 

“It’s a tough decision for casino operators,” Rein says. “Should they focus more on hotel, food and entertainment revenue, or do you try to capture back the gambling? That’s why it’s a no-win situation for many of these guys, because they’re going over the top spending all this money, but they can’t generate the revenue back because the reality is the market has just changed.”

More in the South China Morning Post.

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you looking for more branding experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Shaun Rein will be spending most of July at the US east coast and is available for fees lower than normal. Check in with us if you are interested in having him as a speaker.

Why Macau is losing business - Shaun Rein

+Shaun Rein 

Chinese consumers have different requirements from what most international companies are used to. Gambling hotspot Macau is a clear illustration, says branding expert Shaun Rein, where an imitation of Las Vegas fell flat, he tells in Forbes, although it is a must go for mainland tourists, they miss a lot of business.

Forbes:

China Market Research Group founder Shaun Rein is one of the foremost authorities on mainland consumer tastes and trends. His new book, The End of Copycat China, looks at how Chinese companies have been driven to innovate now that low-hanging fruit of the past two decades has been picked bare. (For those who contend Chinese companies can’t innovate, ever heard of Alibaba?) The book also looks at mainland consumer dynamics helping drive innovation, building on the portrait of consumer trends in Rein’s 2012 book, The End of Cheap China. 

“Our research suggests that Macau is a must stop for all Chinese travelers and that outbound Chinese travel will continue to rise 15-to-20% a year for the next five years,” Rein, an American living in China since the 1990s, says. “There are easily 50 million Chinese who could visit Macau this year and be important gamblers.” 

Mainland arrivals to Macau last year were 18.6 million, 63.5% of the 29.3 million in total arrivals. Many of those mainland arrivals are the same people making several trips. So by Rein’s reckoning, Macau is capturing a small fraction of the potential players from its key market, including those coveted premier mass tier players and the burgeoning middle class driving outbound growth figures. After a recent visit to Macau, he outlined reasons Macau may be missing out on a large chunk of mainland travelers. 

“The casinos need to expand their offerings outside of gambling in order to attract families,” Rein says. “Specifically, casino [resorts] need to cater to women and children with exhibits, dining, amusement parks, shopping so that they can have fun while husbands are gambling. The current offerings targeting children, like those on the Cotai Strip, are not good enough.” 

Shopping is one area where Macau remains too male oriented. “The retail component is critical for Macau to remain competitive, but the mix needs to move away from just luxury that targets male consumers and the typical standard brands of Louis Vuitton and Gucci,” Rein says. ”Newer niche brands targeting female consumers like Tory Burch or Michael Kors need to be given better locations to make Macau more appealing to family trips or just-the-girls trips.” 

There’s a further female issue where Macau can do better. “The casinos also need to be more friendly when stopping women at entrances,” Rein says. “They are not all hookers.”

More in Forbes.

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you interested in more branding experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check our latest update.

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Macau casino's boom despite limitations - Wei Gu

+Wei Gu 

Gambling in Macau is booming, despite a lack of tables, China's anti-corruption drive and a strict visa policy, learns WSJ's wealth editor Wei Gu from Aaron Fisher of CLSA. Gambling in Macau is worth 40 billion US dollar and might overtake the whole of the US in the coming years.

Wei Gu is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.  

China Weekly Hangout

 How do China's media work? The +China Weekly Hangout is going to focus Thursday 7 November on the case of journalist Chen Yongzhou, the reporter of the New Express in Guangdong, and try to figure out how media in China work. Chen got arrested for articles he wrote on the state-owned company Zoomlion, and he developed into a hero for press freedom. Until he apologized for getting paid for those articles. Two scenario's are still possible: a hero or a cheater, or even more scenario's. You can read or announcement here, or register her for the event. 


+Steve Barru, Miguel de Vinchi and +Fons Tuinstra wrapped up early September the news on Shanghai's Free Trade Zone at the +China Weekly Hangout, and end in a not-so positive mood about what this new zone is actually going to do.

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What can Macau learn from Las Vegas - Ben Cavender

Ben Cavender

Gambling enclave Macau faces some stagnation and looks with envy how its US counterpart Las Vegas is doing. Business analyst Ben Cavender tells the Macau Business Daily how Macau can follow in the footsteps of America's iconic gambling city.

The Macau Business Daily:

Las Vegas was very successful in gaining different types of tourists, but Macau is still at the infant stage. Why is it so hard here to diversify the pool of visitors?

You’re looking at Las Vegas as a casino-entertainment-holiday destination, and it’s been that kind of destination for much longer than Macau has. Macau’s history is much shorter, so we’re still at the early stages of development. 

Part of the challenge is that in many ways mainland Chinese consumers are very discerning, very demanding in terms of what they get for their money and what their experience is going to be, and so when they look at Macau they’re still seeing a lot of the development happening. 

So you’ll see people that are saying: “We’re going to wait a year or two to go, because we hear a new casino is opening and we’re not going to go right now, because we don’t want to stay in an old hotel.” There are a lot of people taking a wait-and-see approach to see what’s happening. 

The other problem is that, if you look at Las Vegas, they’ve been able to take their history as a town with organised crime and things like that, and turned that into a positive. They brand the history as being interesting, and people like that. 

If you look at Macau, that sort of history doesn’t exist in the same way. People look at it right now and they draw associations to government officials scamming money and going down to gamble. 

Part of it is doing a stronger job of looking at Macau’s roots, the Portuguese history, the interesting food and interesting culture, and some of that might get a little bit more attractive to people who are sort of looking for a more cultural destination.

More in the Macau Business Daily.

Ben Cavender is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

+China Weekly Hangout 
On Thursday 30 May the China Weekly Hangout will turn to tourism and will ask "What do Chinese tourists want?". Participation from the UK, Singapore, Switzerland and New Zealand is already planned. You can read our latest announcement here, or register for participation here. A full overview of our hangout-channel is here. 

Last week the China Weekly Hangout focused on the changing labor force with +Dee Lee (Inno) of the NGO Inno in Guangzhou, who is running a workers' hotline, mainly funded by big brands who want to keep an eye on working conditions. Also: +Heleen Mees, NYU professor in New York, entrepreneur +Sam Xu  and +Fons Tuinstra, president of the China Speakers Bureau, who ask Dee Lee questions.  

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Why Macau needs a rebrand - Ben Cavender

Ben Cavender

Macau used to be the first spot for Chinese to gamble with there money. But the enclave is losing its attraction and business analyst Ben Cavender looked at the reasons why Macau is losing its competitive edge to other regional hotspots, at CalvinAyre.com. They should offer more that just gambling for the hard core addict, he says.

CalvinAyre:

An expert on the Chinese market has warned Macau casino operators that they need to rebrand their offering if they wish to retain their status as the region’s number one casino destination. Ben Cavender, associate principal at China Market Research, told attendees at this year’s Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia that China’s middle class is starting to view Macau as “an old destination,” leading many of them to feel “they’ve done it already.” 

Cavender says the Chinese middle class has a strong cultural awareness, and when they look at the offerings in Singapore, the Philippines and other regional markets, they see “something new and interesting.” Cavender says Macau does a great job catering to VIPs but needs to address the needs of the middle class through more non-gaming options. The new resorts going up on Cotai are a good start, but Cavender says Macau remains “not easy for families, not friendly for casual gamers who sometimes may not be able to find something else to do besides gambling.”

More at CalvinAyre.com

Ben Cavender is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form. China Weekly Hangout

+China Weekly Hangout 
On Thursday 30 May the China Weekly Hangout will focus also on tourism, the question what Chinese tourists want (apart from placing a compulsory bet).  You can register for participation here, or read our announcement here. Note the change of our regular broadcasting times, so we can include participants from New Zealand, Australia and Japan. Watch below a short introduction of the China Weekly Hangout by moderator +Fons Tuinstra, president of the China Speakers Bureau.

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