PIGGYBACKING ON THE RESORTS
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SINGAPORE - With the opening of the Resorts World Sentosa casino, more light is being shed on who has struck gold so far with the integrated resort: A plethora of businesses.
Both IRs have kept hush-hush the contracts they have awarded, but the advertisements in newspapers congratulating RWS this week, paid for by a slew of companies, reflect where many deals have gone.
They range from banks, both local and foreign, to construction and engineering companies that had a hand in building the six hotels, malls and theme park.
They also include suppliers providing equipment such as audio-visual systems, tools and furniture as well as service providers, for instance, in plumbing, cleaning and laundry.
And at first glance, IT vendors would seem one of the biggest beneficiaries.
NEC Asia was awarded a $4-million contract to provide the ticketing and admission system to the Universal Studios theme park.
All the computers at the sprawling 49-ha Sentosa property will be supplied by Chinese PC giant Lenovo under a multi-million-dollar deal. More than 3,000 computers are estimated to be needed over the next three years, for front-desk operations to backend offices.
All of RWS' servers are provided by Dell.
University of Nevada Las Vegas Singapore dean Andy Nazarechuk told MediaCorp that the large number of visitors to an IR is what accounts for the spillover benefits to other sectors.
"Vendors will need to increase staff, more consultants will be needed, special event companies will have more events to produce and travel agents and transportation services will be very busy once the IR is open," he said.
Home-grown firms are also getting a fair share of the IR pie.
For instance, DDS Contracts & Interior Solutions was awarded a $48-million contract last January to fit out RWS' 150,000-sq m casino and to supply gaming furniture.
Up to 80 per cent of the utensils and crockery used at the Genting property are from local kitchenware supplier Lau Choy Seng.
And of the six zones in the Universal Studios theme park, three of them - Lost World, Jurassic Park and Egypt - were designed and constructed by a joint venture between Singapore's Pico Art and Australia's Sanderson Design Group under a US$30-million deal.
Among other things, ST Electronics are behind the Sentosa IR's integrated security system, IT infrastructure system and a car park guidance and payment system.
RWS also became one of the first backers of SingTel's corporate pay-TV ambitions.
Under a seven-year contract of undisclosed value, all 1,800 rooms in the six RWS hotels will be equipped with SingTel's mio TV service, which guests can use to surf wirelessly, play computer games as well as access music and content. ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY NEO CHAI CHIN
From TODAY, Friday, 19-Feb-2010
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