Korean conventional music band MeganDang performs throughout the grand opening ceremony of Mohegan Encourage Leisure Resort in Incheon, March 5. Courtesy of Mohegan Encourage Leisure Resort
Accountable playing tradition, Ok-pop key to improvement of Korea’s built-in resorts: consultants
Editor’s observe
That is the final in a three-part collection on rising competitors in Asia for improvement of built-in resorts and recommendation for Korea to spice up its tourism business. — ED.
By Lee Hae-rin
Korea’s Ministry of Tradition, Sports activities and Tourism granted Mohegan Encourage a license to function a foreigner-only on line casino in January. It was the primary time since 2005 that the federal government granted such permission and it was additionally the primary license of its form issued to a international investor.
“We count on the opening of Encourage resort to transcend the mere addition of a on line casino enterprise website within the nation. As an alternative, it’s anticipated to characterize a major milestone in Korea’s tradition and tourism business,” Tradition Minister Yu In-chon stated in his congratulatory message.
Nonetheless, whereas Korea has set an bold objective to draw 20 million inbound guests and tourism income of $24.5 billion and has introduced plans to foster the journey and tourism business, it nonetheless lacks infrastructure that may hyperlink cultural excessive value-added tourism income.
Based on consultants, with the intention to develop Korean-style advanced resorts and achieve the higher hand in Asia’s advanced resort competitors, Korea wants methods that mix gaming rules and leverage the rising reputation of Ok-culture to develop leisure services.
A foreigner-only on line casino at Jeju Dream Tower built-in resort / Courtesy of Jeju Dream Tower
System to foster accountable playing
Korea doesn’t have a strict on line casino regulation or associated regulatory organizations and has not been in a position to correctly deal with playing habit and unlawful playing that the general public is worried about.
Consequently, it has led to public mistrust of on line casino administration and acted as an impediment to drawing social assist for introducing built-in resorts.
Specialists counsel that institutional upkeep, reminiscent of on line casino supervision that may be trusted by the general public, should come first to foster a Korean built-in resort, and that innovation is required to advance Korea’s supervisory system by benchmarking instances in neighboring nations, which management playing habit and unlawful gaming points successfully.
“With a purpose to develop and foster built-in resorts as an business, Korea must have a medium- to long-term improvement plan primarily based on on line casino insurance policies, as regards to these of different nations that run built-in resorts round us,” stated Lee Hoon, a professor of tourism at Hanyang College.
Singapore has carried out accountable playing methods reminiscent of elevating admission charges to limit residents’ indiscriminate entry to casinos, banning the set up of ATMs in casinos and self-exclusion applications as a part of its playing habit measures.
In the meantime, Japan deeply addressed the method of legalizing casinos and launched the Built-in Resort Upkeep Act that banned the set up of ATMs, restricted the variety of every home customer’s admission to a few instances per week and 10 instances per 4 weeks, imposed an admission tax of 6,000 yen and prohibited the usage of bank cards for buying on line casino chips.
Korea additionally wants a unified administrative physique to control gaming, consultants identified.
“For instance, neighboring Singapore and the Philippines have supervisory our bodies devoted to on line casino administration. Whether or not it’s a committee or a division, a supervisory administration physique devoted to supervising and fostering the on line casino business is required,” stated Website positioning Gained-seok, a professor on the School of Resort and Tourism at Kyung Hee College, referring to the Macao Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ), Singapore Playing Regulatory Authority (GRA) and Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR).
Additionally, Japan established the Japan On line casino Regulatory Fee (JCRC) in January 2020 beneath the jurisdiction of the prime minister for on line casino regulation.
Then again, within the case of Korea, the Nationwide Playing Management Committee, an administrative committee beneath the prime minister established in 2007, and the Ministry of Tradition, Sports activities and Tourism are collectively in control of administration and supervision of the gaming business.
The foreign-only on line casino at Mohegan Encourage Leisure Resort in Incheon opened Feb. 3. Courtesy of Mohegan Encourage Leisure Resort
The southern resort island of Jeju, which has eight foreigner-only casinos, has a twin construction with a separate supervisory authority beneath the municipal ordinance that governs casinos.
Specialists highlighted a necessity to alter the general public’s damaging sentiment towards casinos.
About half of Jeju residents imagine that the island’s casinos contribute to will increase in native crime and subsequently extra authorities regulation is important, in line with a survey from January carried out by the Jeju Particular Self-Governing Province with 1,000 islanders aged over 19.
Some 52 p.c stated the playing services have damaging environmental results by creating waste, noise air pollution and visitors congestion, whereas 55.1 p.c thought the casinos pose dangerous results to youngsters and the academic setting. Solely 13.7 p.c disagreed.
“A very powerful level is to totally give you methods to resolve the issues of playing habit. We want applications to scale back habit whereas offering rehabilitation to most significantly reassure the general public by strengthening accountable playing methods,” stated Lee Choong-ki, a professor of resort and tourism administration at Kyung Hee College.
Korea’s playing habit price stands round 5 p.c, which is comparatively larger than Singapore’s 1.2 p.c, as of final 12 months.
A digital present that includes sea life is displayed at Mohegan Encourage Leisure Resort’s Aurora, a 150-meter-long immersive digital leisure avenue with big LED screens, on Incheon’s Yeongjong Island. Courtesy of Encourage Leisure Resort
Creating non-gaming services
Specialists additionally identified that built-in resorts can result in synergy solely when non-gaming tourism belongings of the services are promoted collectively with on line casino regulation.
“In different phrases, a method to diversify tourism assets via tourism promotion is required together with rules by supervisory businesses for establishing a sound gaming tradition,” Lee Choong-ki stated.
As an example, the Singapore Tourism Authority is steadily growing tourism assets to lure international vacationers again for repeat visits, reminiscent of the development of the Botanical Gardens.
Macao can be specializing in growing varied tourism assets reminiscent of leisure, and eating places whereas internet hosting varied MICE and worldwide occasions, whereas Japan stipulates that income obtained via built-in resorts needs to be reinvested within the improvement of native tourism assets.
“Since Korea is a cultural powerhouse, Korea may deliver Ok-content to distinguish its built-in resorts,” Website positioning stated.
Lee Choong-ki mirrored Website positioning’s view, highlighting not solely Korea’s music and drama but additionally meals, historical past and tradition, which have garnered worldwide reputation, may root out differentiated content material from these of Osaka and Singapore.
Korean band Nell performs throughout Asian Pop Competition 2024 at Paradise Metropolis in Incheon, June 22. The 2-day pageant that ran between June 22 and 23 featured reside performances by 50 musicians from seven Asian nations and was joined by 10,000 company within the viewers. Courtesy of Paradise Cultural Basis
Based on home inbound tourism platform Inventive Journey’s evaluation of the variety of transactions by international vacationers visiting Korea throughout the first half of 2024, magnificence and hair outlets have ranked extremely among the many classes by which inbound guests spend essentially the most cash.
The methods they search to get pleasure from meals tradition has additionally grown just like these of native Koreans, reminiscent of ordering supply hen and having fun with night time and consuming tradition.
Creating built-in resorts may contribute to luring Koreans from touring overseas and channeling their tourism spending abroad, Lee identified.
“Koreans journey overseas loads, so we have to construct an infrastructure that may deliver them again to Korea, which could be potential via growing built-in resorts,” Lee Choong-ki stated.
Based on the Financial institution of Korea and the Korea Tourism Group, the journey account within the first half of this 12 months was $6.48 billion, the biggest deficit in six years since 2018’s $7.7 billion.
Within the first half of this 12 months, 14.02 million Koreans traveled overseas, which is 82.1 p.c greater than 7.7 million international vacationers who visited Korea.
Terminal 1 of Incheon Worldwide Airport bustles with outbound vacationers leaving for summer time holidays, Aug. 4. Yonhap
