During this week when I was scanning through the news clippings in my office, I noticed a number of stories concerning latest developments in the gaming industry in the region. These included the Taiwan government's decision to agree in principle on the development of casino business in its offshore islands of Penghu. Although I believe this project will basically be targeted at domestic patrons in Taiwan, this new proposal, added to the new gaming venues to be opened later this year in Sentosa, Singapore, demonstrate that neighbouring regions and countries in Asia have been paying higher attention to their gaming industry development.
In our neighbouring SAR – Macau – there's also news this week highlighting the pace of its gaming and tourism development, as the Government Tourist Office announced that the number of tourists visiting Macau last year surged 11 percent to reach 30.18 million. As it happened, on the same day the Hong Kong Tourism Board announced that a total of 29.51 million travellers visited Hong Kong last year. So this is the first time in history that the number of people visiting Macau has exceeded those coming to Hong Kong.
What made me even more amazed was that the total gaming revenues reaped from those visitors to Macau reached a staggering 83.4 billion patacas for the first nine months of 2008, a huge increase on the 60 billion patacas registered for the full year of 2007. This far exceeds the HK$11.4 billion horse race betting revenue (with dividends and rebates deducted) that registered by the Club for the whole of last season.
It has never been my intention to suggest to you that we start discussing whether Hong Kong should follow in the footsteps of its regional counterparts and set up a casino in the territory. But these dazzling figures illustrate clearly once again that the rapid development of Macau's tourism and gaming entertainment industry, as well as the intensified competition in our neighbouring countries and regions, are already posing severe challenges to the Club. Meanwhile, I think everybody in Hong Kong must also be concerned about the impact this will have on our tourism industry and our wider economy in the long run.
As I've mentioned before on this issue, one important step the Club needs to take is making further investments in its racecourse facilities. We need to add more entertainment elements to the racing experience and enhance the sport's appeal to a wider audience, so as to ensure that horse racing retains its status as the No.1 form of sporting entertainment in Hong Kong.
Tomorrow at Sha Tin Racecourse, there should certainly be some top-class sporting entertainment on offer as we will be hosting one of our most important Group One events of the season, the Mercedes-Benz Hong Kong Classic Mile. This is the event that always kicks off our classic series for four-year-olds, and this year 14 young elite horses will be contesting this lead-up event with their eye on the ultimate honour – the Mercedes-Benz Hong Kong Derby on 22 March, our longest established classic race.
Among the field, I will be paying my special attention to our International Sale graduate Unique Jewellery. Although this John Size-trained horse has drawn wide at Gate 10, he has shown in recent starts that he can be staying at handy positions, so I believe it will not do much harm for him and I hope he will have a good performance tomorrow. But I think it will be a terrific race as runners like Kings Falcon, Thumbs Up and Roma Pegasus also have the credentials to contest for the honour.
For other races on the card, I will be also keeping my eyes to Moon Chaser. Having won in his career debut in Hong Kong last November, he still managed to finish fourth despite of starting the race from Gate 12 in his last run, he will be running at the extended distance at 1,400m tomorrow but enjoying a good draw, let's see if he can perform better this time.
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