Resorts World at Sentosa is expected to give Singapore small and medium-sized companies a big lift.
In its first news conference since winning the bid to build Singapore’s second integrated resort last Friday, the Genting International-Star Cruises consortium said up to S$200 million (US$120 million) worth of goods and services will be procured from local companies each year.
The $5.2 billion resort is poised to give Singapore’s tourism sector a boost.But that’s not all.
Genting-Star Cruises wants to give Singapore companies a roll of the dice as well, by awarding between $100 million and $200 million worth of projects to them every year, in areas such as hotel supplies, security, laundry and landscaping services.
“We have roped in financial institutions to provide financing support to SMEs interested to provide goods and services to the resort. The financing support will help the SMEs to improve their cashflow, enhance their ability to invest in resources and equipment, and allow them to have access to opportunities presented at the resort,” says Tan Hee Teck, Chief Financial Officer of Genting International.
The resort aims to attract 15 million visitors during its first year of operation in 2010 and hopes to breakeven in seven years.
The Genting-Star Cruises group is also planning to woo more tourists from the region with special cruise packages.
“If you look at Florida or Disney, as an example, Disney has a very popular package, what they call land and cruise (where you’ll have) four days of cruise and four days at Magic Kingdom. We’ll be packaging passengers from India where we have home ported ships. And in North Asia, we’re primarily targeting the Chinese market,” says Lim Kok Thay, chairman of Genting International-Star Cruises.
Genting will also set aside $30 million a year to fund marine biology programmes to promote research and education.
These will include field trips for students, internship programmes and placement of over 20 post-graduate students from Singapore in sponsored research fellowship overseas.
Genting says it hopes to work with Marina Bay Sands to provide complimentary offerings. For example, Resorts World at Sentosa will not focus too much on the convention and exhibition component but geared towards providing incentive packages at its attractions like Universal Studios and the Maritime Xperential Museum.
Over the next three months, Genting will be hiring engineers and contractors to work on the project.
It expects the three-year construction period to create 22,000 jobs and generate nearly $4 billion of value-add to the Singapore economy.
Source: Channel NewsAsia, 11 December 2006