Inside Asian Gaming

IAG JAPAN APR 2019 30 COVER STORY “We are the closest European style city in Asia. Around that, we have many other options,” Primorsky Province Tourism Department Director Konstantin Shestakov says of Vladivostok, Primorsky’s capital withapopulationof 600,000. Russian officials right up to President Vladimir Putin have been working for nearly a decade to put Primorsky on the tourism map. Until 1992, Vladivostok was a closed city due to its strategic role as the home of the Soviet Pacific fleet. Its international coming out party, the 2012 APEC Summit, included US$20 billion in infrastructure improvements, from a new airport terminal and runway improvements to a new campus for Far Eastern Federal University – the APEC venue and now home to the annual Eastern Economic Forum that brings together top officials fromRussia, Japan, South Korea andMongolia – all connected with iconic cable- stayed bridges, one of them the world’s longest. Formed around vast Golden Horn Bay with steep hills, Vladivostok evokes comparisons with San Francisco. Vladivostok has a branch of Saint Petersburg’s renowned Mariinsky Theatre, playing its sixth season in a state of the art opera house built for it. Rural Primorsky is home to Siberian tigers, leopards, bears and marine mammals from walruses to whales. Exceptional seafood heads the menu of what’s an emerging foodie destination. Those attractions were enough to lure 780,000 visitors in 2018. The only Asia-focused area among Russia’s four zones for legal gambling opened after the 2009 shutdown of the nation’s casinos, Primorsky Krai (a Russian term for border region) Integrated Entertainment Zone measures 619 hectares (1,530 acres). About 40% of the zone has been offered for development so far. “The area has beautiful lakes, hiking trails, skiing, ice skating, hunting and numerous outdoor attractions that will be further developed with increased investment and tourism growth,” NagaCorp Chairman Tim McNally says, adding that Primorsky’s fresh air and open spaces will be novelties for many visitors. The operator of NagaWorld in Phnom Penh owns one of Primorsky’s three casino projects under development to join Tigre de Cristal, open since November 2015. Most relevant to the gaming business, Primorsky IEZ is 15 minutes from the airport with flight times under 90 minutes to Harbin and Changchun. Primorsky also shares land borders with northeast China’s Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces, is under two hours to Seoul and less than three hours to Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo. In each instance, Primorsky is closer than Macau. Russia offers visa-free entry to South Koreans – Primorsky’s fastest growing visitor group, though Chinese account for roughly two-thirds of foreign visitors – and Primorsky has liberalized visa policy to 18 countries including China and Japan, with online visas often provided within hours of application. Shestakov says officials are looking at easing visa requirements further. Tourism officials are also working to improve air connectivity. Shestakov notes that Singapore’s Changi Airports International became a partner in Vladivostok International Airport in 2017. “We’re both interested in increasing the number of international flights,” Shestakov says. In 2018, international passenger traffic surpassed one million for the first time, rising 47% to 1.15 million. Traffic on South Korea routes grew 73%. In January, a South Korean developer agreed to build a US$30 million golf course project including a 100 room hotel. Primorksy Krai Development Corporation Director General Igor Trofimov, whose organization oversees the IEZ build out, says, “Koreans think this territory has a future.” 目的地:プリモルスキー Destination: Primorsky