Chinese Gambling Tours in Australia – Growing Opportunity for Tourism

As land-based casino revenues are starting to fluctuate in Australia due to growing demand for online-based applications, gambling centers throughout the nation are now looking to alternative solutions for bringing in steady revenues. Amongst these strategies are in fact casino packages geared towards non-AU residents who are looking to gamble due to legality issues of casinos in their home countries. Within this target group, Chinese happen to be at the forefront.

Gambling for money in China is illegal with the exception at Macau, which fell under Portuguese jurisdiction up until 1999 before returning back to Mainland China. At this time casino halls had already been established and mainlanders were granted easy access into the territory due to government agreements that granted special visa waivers. Due to Macau’s close proximity to China, it was the top choice for Chinese to visit and take in gambling legally.

As China’s economy has grown over the last two decades due to liberalization for local industries into the global market, the amount of wealth in China has also been on the increase, showing a major incline as of 2008 when the Olympics occurred. Since that time China’s economy has boomed, showing double-digit growth a year and GDP per capita has also climbed. As these trends unfolded, tourism from Chinese into Australia has climbed over 18% on year in 2014, generating over $5.7 billion in expenditures. Chinese tourism to Australia will climb at an expected double-digit rate throughout 2020 in which expenditures will grow to around $20 billion.

These opportunities with Chinese tourists are huge for major industries such as casinos. While women are often more concerned with things such as food and shopping, Chinese men love to gamble and take every chance they can to visit a casino while abroad. Many of them are high rollers and Chinese are known for bringing huge amounts of cash with them as part of their traveling status as well as to fully enjoy their experience abroad. Catering to Chinese then means that casinos should provide Chinese-language instruction for games across casinos, offer travel packages and cooperate with travel agencies, as well as obtain specialized catering to give Chinese the best impression possible.

Gambling halls in Australia should also cooperate with airlines, providing specialized slights with casino information in Chinese, as well as other cultural and even local organizations ranging from restaurants, souvenir shops and many others to form a web and ecosystem driven towards pushing Chinese tourists into gambling halls in Australia. There would be some investments involved, but the turnaround would be fast

All of these moves could greatly enhance revenue growth at local casinos, which are increasingly reliant on tourism from abroad. In fact, many reports in Australia attribute the rise in tourism from China to Australia a major contributor of economic growth for many businesses down under due to Chinese big spending attitudes. All the signs point toward a rising economy in China coupled with a “big spending” culture that likes entertainment and partaking in things otherwise not found in China such as casinos.

Instead of trying to combat the online gambling community in Australia that is continuing to grow, the land-based casino environment should react with smart solutions such as increased cooperation with other segments. The above-mentioned outlines are only but a few of the many possible ways casinos could forge new territories and maintain a healthy business model as local Aussies grow tiresome of these venues. Moreover, upcoming generations are turning to mobile applications that can be customized to their liking and are increasingly veering away from traditional platforms such as land-based casinos, which will hurt casinos’ developments in the future.