Kerzner International's Bahamas Managing Director George Markantonis warned The Bahamas to expect a big hit on its tourism product if the three massive casinos proposed for Miami-Dade and Broward counties are built next year

A threat to the Bahamas' tourism industry

tribune242 editorial


IN A recent article in The Tribune John Issa of Breezes warned that "the Bahamas, and more particularly Nassau and Freeport, will have to put more effort into developing and promoting our other resort attractions because gambling will be less of a draw than it was in years past". Also, he said, the cost of doing business in the Bahamas would have to come down, if this country hoped to compete internationally.

On Friday, Kerzner International's Bahamas Managing Director George Markantonis also warned the Bahamas to expect a big hit on its tourism product if the three massive casinos proposed for Miami-Dade and Broward counties are built next year.

As Mr Issa wrote: "Since the birth of Las Vegas over 60 years ago, casinos were considered, during the earlier decades, a sufficient attraction to be the main draw for a resort or destination."

When gambling was legalised in the Bahamas - over the loud objection of the Baptists - the fact that these islands were only a 30-minute flight from Miami set the gambling addict's heart aflutter. Regular charter flights from the US were provided weekly by the Lucayan casino to fill its gambling tables. It proved a good business and was certainly a revenue spinner for the Public Treasury.

It eventually spread to Nassau and fairly recent legislation provided that any hotel with a certain number of rooms constructed on any of the Family Islands could include a gaming room as a part of its attractions.

While it lasted, it brought in good business. In those days, committed gamblers - and there were many -- had to travel many thousands of miles to find a casino. There were the casinos of Las Vegas, Monte Carlo, Maçau, Baden Baden, Havana and Nassau. These were the areas that rolled the dice.

Today, there is such a proliferation of casinos that one no longer has to travel any distance. A player can even stay at home and indulge in online betting. That indeed is the rub for the Bahamas. No one has to book a charter any more to get to the gaming tables.

Baha Mar's 1,000-acre, $3.5 billion Cable Beach resort, which aims for a 2014 opening, boasts that with a 100,000sq ft space it will have the largest casino in the Caribbean. It says that it will be twice the size of Atlantis, which when it was opened on Paradise Island by Resorts International boasted that it was the largest casino complex in the Bahamas. In those days, that was indeed a proud boast -- it had put Freeport in the shadows.

And now comes Florida -- just a half hour away -- threatening all of them with the world's largest casinos.

The obvious difference between Atlantis and Baha Mar is that the Cable Beach venture - misreading the market trend -- is banking on attracting the convention and gambling crowd. Atlantis - although it too went for conventions in a big way just before conventions were being curtailed in the US, and nurtured its casino business - decided to create a family-oriented resort. In the end, it might find itself -- with its magnificent display of marine life and water attractions -- in the best position to weather the resort storm when the need for offshore gambling starts to fade.

Tempting Florida, which was hard hit by the collapse of the housing market, and high employment, is an offer by Genting Corporation, a Malaysian company, to build three lavish $2 billion casinos in South Florida.

"And with the promise of tens of thousands of sorely needed jobs and many millions of dollars in tax revenue, Florida politicians are recalibrating their positions," reported Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times on Friday. The artist's drawings of the three casinos are indeed surreal as they point skyward on what appears to be layer upon layer of large saucers. Obviously, they have not been designed with hurricanes in mind.

Already Genting, according to The New York Times, has paid $236 million cash for The Miami Herald's headquarters on Biscayne Bay. It has also bought neighbouring properties to make up 30 acres for one of the casinos.

In addition, Genting has promised Florida the world and more besides to get its commercial heart beating again. It is an offer -- considering the economic times - that will be hard to refuse.

In January, a casino bill will be debated in the Tallahassee legislature. It will have to change Florida's position on gambling if the Genting project is to get off the ground. And this is where the future of the Bahamas' tourism hangs in the balance.

Although there is a strong lobby supporting the Genting proposal, Disney, Florida's most powerful corporation, is totally against. Disney claims that casinos - certainly casinos on such a large scale - will destroy Florida's theme park image. Disney is backed by the Chamber of Commerce.

"Expanding casino gambling in Florida would never make sense in a good economy," said Mark A Wilson, the president and chief executive of the Florida Chamber of Commerce. "And the only reason they are even targeting Florida is that they are hoping that desperate people will reach for desperate measures. There is never a good time to push a bad idea."

Not only does Florida's future hang in the balance, but come January so does the Bahamas'. As Mr Issa and Mr Markantonis have said, it is now up to the Bahamas to improve its product. Mr Markantonis pointed out that the advantage that Florida has over the Bahamas is that it has "drive traffic and we have airlift".

Airlift is another sad story for another day.

October 31, 2011

tribune242 editorial

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