Well, it's taken me nearly two weeks to recover from my trip to Macau at the end of February to attend the Asian iGaming Congress and Expo. I've been to the other side of the worlds a few times (Japan, Korea, Australia), but never to China before. Let's just say I have a new perspective.
The trip itself was pretty amazing. After a short plane ride from Boston to Newark, New Jersey, I boarded a non-stop flight to Hong Kong. We're talking about 16 hours in a single plane flight - A sunset, followed by a sunrise, followed by another sunset in a single flight. Definitely a first for me. And then there was the flight path - further north than I've ever been before.
Sunrise in the far North - Frozen Sea Ice
Then, after landing, a wait of a couple hours before catching the hour ferry ride to Macau from the Hong Kong airport. Thus a bus ride to the Venitian Macau - my home for the next few days. The Venetian Casino-Hotel complex is HUGE - bigger than the Venetian in Vegas. It has 546,000 square feet of gaming space features 6,000 gaming machines and 870 table games. The property has eighteen restaurants, two bars, a hotel with 3,000 rooms, and a shopping mall with hundreds of stores.
The conference itself had 400 attendees - double the number there were last year. The Asian gaming market is huge, and there are a lot of folks who are very excited about the future of online gaming in this part of the world. One thing I can say - it will be very interesting to see how the marketplace evolves.
On one hand the games are different, and the way money is handled poses a huge challenge. And the politics are very complicated, and not so friendly to outsiders. On the other hand, the potential market is huge and there is a well established culture of luck and fate, and betting is a part of the culture, although not the traditional casino games most common in the American and European marketplaces.
AiG congress session - Lunch sponsored by the World Mahjong Tour - The exhibit hall
These are just a few of the pictures I took at the conference. There was a party, and the rooms inside the Venetian are very nice (they better be at over USD $300 per night for a standard room). To see the pictures above in a photo album where you can zoom in to see the details, and many of the other pictures I took, just follow the link to see my
AiG photos on facebook.
Of course, I spread the word about the GPWA while I was there, and a many of the attendees left with a copy of the GPWA Times magazine. As part of our relationship with Clarion Gaming, the GPWA was an official association sponsor of the event.
Michael