Name: Brainstorm Design 2023: Macau’s Design Future
Uploaded: 2023-12-07
Duration: 21 min 45 s
Description: Pansy Ho, Chairperson and Executive Director, MGM China Holdings Limited In conversation with: Alan Murray, FORTUNE

Pansy Ho, Chairperson and Executive Director, MGM China Holdings Limited In conversation with: Alan Murray, FORTUNE  

Brainstorm Design 2023: Macau’s Design Future

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Macau has a bold economic vision for its future one that involves a dramatic expansion of the city's array of culture, art, retail entertainment uh offerings. As we heard this morning, successful urban design demands an understanding and engagement with local residents in order to shape cities and communities around the ways that people actually live. And there are few business leaders in the world. I would argue that understand their cities as well as Pansy Ho understands. Macau. Please welcome to the stage, Pansy Ho Fancy. First of all, thank you for hosting us in this fabulous hotel. It's been really great and uh we all appreciate it. Thank you very much for coming and especially a warm welcome to everyone. Hope this is if your first, then this will become the first of many. Uh I can guarantee you that because I'm sure you will all be converted now. Great. We will all come back. We, we promise and, and can you? It's I I've had some time to walk around. Things seem very busy. How close are you to your pre panem levels? Now, how much have you recovered at, at our property or you know our enterprise level, it would be probably already close to 80 some percent, eighties, eighties in the high eighties. But for the general um and average business wise in Macau, I would say official data would be close to 60 some percent. So you're outperforming in a kind of way. Um So, so your family, you and your family have been an integral part of Macau. Macau's development. Macau's history and its story for generations. What's next? Where does Macau go from here? I know that's something you've spent a lot of time thinking about working on. Give us a give us a notion of the vision for the future. Macau is going to have to take a new, completely new perspective. I mean, it, it's true after the return of the sovereignty to China, established as a special administrative region. Now we have, you know, been through 24 years now. Uh next year is our 25th anniversary. Um The 1st 20 plus years was mainly focused on basically building up all the infrastructure necessary in order so that Macau will a maintain a sustainable development in its pillar industry led tourism uh ecosystem. So it's very complicated and long, but it's actually very simple. It is using gaming to sustain and to help build out the non gaming aspects. Um in hospitality, in Mice in, you know, of course, now what we are looking at which is all the arts and cultural activities and you know, sports and recreation. It, it was 20 some years. Uh, it seemed very long, but I started back then thinking that we have so much to do. We did, we did a lot, look at, look around us. It's not just this property, it's all the different properties, especially in this area which we call the kai area 25 years ago. This was water, there was nothing, it was basically all reclaimed land and in fact, it was a um also historical or you know, a major move of having been able to fill these lands within, I think a short span of three years which you know, so don't, don't worry, we're not going to sink. Um This is very stable. Um But, but so we saw all this happen. Uh We didn't have a road map, to be honest, we just moved forward every time there would be the opportunity. The economy is responding positively, the policies from central government is going to support our growth or by giving us more visitors. I was there 25 years ago as the only supplier of the the main transportation link between Hong Kong and Macau. In those days, there weren't other possibilities of coming into Macau. You have to take a ferry. Yeah, you have to take the ferry. I provide that service. I can tell you what was the figure in those, you know, 25 years ago, the total visitation to Macau was three point a million a year uh before the pandemic. At 2019, we were close to 40 million, more than 10 times more than 10 times. Now, of course, they could come from different parts of China. They can come from different parts of the world and they can fly into five different uh international airport, Hong Kong International, Shenzhen Zhuhai, Guangzhou Macau's own. And they can all come to visit Macau but except what to do, what is there to do. I mean, even, you know, during the 20 some years, it's, it's mind boggling that there are, there were so many people who actually came, but now we need to make sure that they will continue coming. Yeah. So let's explore that. It's so interesting by the way, listening to you talk about this because I was uh last week in Abu Dhabi where we had a, a fortune conference and Abu Dhabi, you know, was uh the UAE had an economy that was 70 to 80% oil revenue. They now have it to about 50%. Their goal is to diversify and get the oil portion down to 30%. How about Macau? It's similar numbers, right? 70 to 80% is gaming a day. Where will you be? 10 years from now? We will have to be at least over 50. That is the goal. That is exactly what the goal has been set. That's a lot. That's a lot. So when we all came in, there were six integrated Resorts company now operating in Macau throughout the past 25 years, we have all basically contributed something like um $50 billion in terms of constructing out all these major facilities. Um The government last year was going through a what they call retender process, which is, we all have to, it was very serious. I have to come and live here for six months in order to prepare, you know, to that exercise. We all thought in the beginning it was just filling in a form, you know, just saying, yeah, sure. I want to stay on and you know, maybe I'm going to spend some money to make sure that we will upgrade the facilities. But no, they made it into a race. In fact, we were upgraded. We came first. We are very happy. Congratulations. But you were here for six months. I was in six months working for it without knowing, without knowing though, I came with a little hand carry bag thinking that I was here to just submit the already prepared, you know, file the docket and then I would be taking a nice picture and then I would say, yeah, I will wait for the results. Then they said no, no, because nobody had understood properly the exercise. They said no, we want you to fill in not just the form but explain and express exactly how you are going to fulfill. Yeah. So talk, yeah, talk, talk to us. About fulfillment because it's fascinating. I mean, going from 70 to 80% to 50% is no small thing I know. My understanding is that you in that process committed 2 billion $2 billion over the next 10 years to develop non gaming attractions. So, and you spent six months filling out the detail. What does the detail look like and how do you get people to come here for reasons other than gaming, the easiest way to explain this in the past. It's not like mccowen did not have, you know, interesting things to offer. We were talking, you know, before coming on stage already that Macau has had 500 years of very rich history of its own, you know, very deservingly. Uh If you had already time to go check it out, you can, Macau has been granted two UEO you know, kind of merits. One is for the cluster city of the world. The other one is for a creative city of gastronomy. But why did we have those? Because we had had already 500 years of using Macau as a gateway, you know, uh doing trading. And of course, there was a Portuguese uh presence and they had also brought a lot of the Western influences, but Maca has been a place that is interesting, not just because of that, but even hundreds of years ahead of that, there were already all the different settlers coming in from different parts of China So this is not in itself originally, there were the, you know, kind of uh um original types of people here. They were drawn from different parts of China with different traditions. So much more, you said this back, much more of a kind of a melting, much more, far more. Uh so, and then what happens now is even throughout the whole history when my dad started, you know, really bringing all the new infrastructure into Macau and reviving all these, you know, culture aspects. It serves a very small population base. It was mainly, you know, frequented by people from Hong Kong or some Asian people. Now, our ambition is far bigger. We want to attract the rest of the world. So what's gonna, what's gonna make me exactly. So in the past, we would have maybe over the year, we will have a Grand Prix. We have a, we have a Rose Street uh formula three Grand Prix, which has already celebrated its 65th anniversary. So we were ahead of many people. We were first. Um other than Monaco to really have a formula three road street racing longer history than even Monaco. Now, there's of course Singapore, there's Las Vegas, there's Abu Dhabi and so on. But we have done it far longer. But imagine in those days you have two weeks out of the whole year that you could have a major event, a mega event, so to speak. Then we added to it the music festival, there would be a Latin, you know, whatever parade, but it's scattered. It, it takes up, you know, maybe less than a month of time throughout, but spread out into the whole year. What the government has practically made us do is to write into the calendar. Now that practically on a monthly or even weekly basis, we're going to have something to offer, like what we're doing here now. So we, we would have tons of events and you know, they all have to be, some are acquired. Of course, you can just have a concert, we are going to have a concert. I'm not going to tell you, I have tickets to share with you because we already are fully sold off, you know, on our Bruno Mass on January 6th. That's great. But if you can get Taylor Swift to come, you will have your goal. But we have something also more interesting. It's not just always, you know, the the more popular commercial shows. We are also doing something we, since we are talking about, you know, brainstorming on design creativity, we're also doing something that original. That has been always the mark for MGN for me, you know, which is my, my, my, my passion and interest in doing something always with originality and, and I hope, which would also not only always become the first but more importantly, become something that would be, you know, for sustainable growth and development. So for instance, other than having a Bruno Mars event on the sixth of January, we also would be having two nights of very remark remarkable concert done by Tom Don who's coming in and he's going to do, you know, his most popular um or uh orchestra piece. And more importantly, this is with his own passion also to, you know, embrace and to promote minority uh ethnic minority art. Um And so he's going to because this whole idea originated from the Silk Road um from Dong Huang. So we are not going to very exciting, you know, as we speak. Now, I'm going to work with Tom Den, not just on the concert, but then to bring this, you know, into the next phase, which is we are trying to work on a Don won presentation together, going to the future. We're going to build out our own museum. We're going to have a fantasy here at the hotel at this property by next year, next year, when you come, I mean, the hotel itself is quite a museum. You have fabulous art, but those are only static, you know, those we collect and then we display now we're moving on to the next phase by next year, this time, hopefully, where will it be? Do you have the space? It's not on this property? It's going to be in the Peninsular property. We have dedicated 66,000 square feet, 66,600 square meters of space and turn it into what we call a fantasy book. And as all these things are developing, you have more concerts, you have Bruno Mars, you have an art gallery that people want to come visit. You want to attract people from all over the world to visit it. Do you think gaming will go down? No, we want gaming to go up. You want it all? Of course, we want gaming to go up, gaming will give us the money, the financial, you know, means in order so that we can plow that into, you know, all these, you have the workforce here to make all of this work. Yes. Well, the workforce is going to be something exactly on point that we need to be able to convince the government. And also, of course, the locals to want to embrace this, you know, that we are all working towards the same goal and they will want to invite more of foreign talent and people with expertise to come in and we work, you know, towards the goal of building not just one show, one event, but the whole ecosystem. Wow. So Macau is often compared to Las Vegas or maybe to Monaco. Do you, is there anything you can learn from those places are there or other cities you're looking to, to uh inspire what you're trying to build here? Um Ironically again, because my partners, you know, is from America is MGM itself from Las Vegas, the largest player in Las Vegas. But we, we are not looking to just copying or bringing just what has been done. In fact, anything that you see in Macau, especially with our properties, uh uh more originally created and, and an ation of, you know, what we believe would be the right um kind of directions and also offerings for the new customers that we see growing in China. If you've been yourself visiting some of these really, you know, amazing cities in China, you would, you would realize why we need to. In fact, this is a race who will actually become a leader in the pack. I was just in Hangzhou for the um Asian Games opening and we were all going to this new stadium, they built, not just a stadium, they built a new city for the Asian Games, a whole new city. And I am, you know, probably somebody who has been already quite well traveled and I've seen, you know, enough and when I was there, it was just mind boggling. Wow, you know why? And, and they have leapfrogged like by a decade or more uh in, in terms of and you know that now this is the hub of technology in Hangzhou where Alibaba, you know, is placing its headquarters and together they were not just one enterprise but practically becoming the Silicon Valley, you know, of Asia. All the talents were were there, all the young people were all you know, with beaming with great ideas gleaming with, you know, energy to to to push towards the next level in terms of technology and design and creativity. So I mean, Macau could easily take inspiration from them, from those cities. We definitely want to recruit talents from these places. We want to bring them and tell them we have. This is a clean slate. You come, we will work together, this is the perfect storm. This is the perfect formula. We have the means we have the financial resources, we have the needs, we have the customer base and it sounds like you have the determination and the determination and we have a deadline, we have to do it all within 10 years. One of the things that you pledged to do is redevelop the temple area. Can you talk about what you're doing? The temple? Of course, is one of the what we call the historic kind of heritage site under preservation, so called the ba you know, district because it's not just one temple, it's a temple situated in a wider uh kind of uh uh geographic area which has always in the past been the original area of uh uh the Portuguese settling. In fact that is where the Macau, the word or the name Macau came from. I only learned about that lately. Um Macau six month period, Macau in the past, nobody had been able to explain why Macau because it's not even a word in Portuguese and it's neither in Chinese. So that's where it all came from. The Portuguese people, they wanted to go to Canton, which is Guangzhou today and there was a storm and they got, you know, basically, you know, they, they lost their way and then they came into the Bay of Macau and they, they, they looked up and they see people running around, you know, they were very in those days having a major Portuguese trading ship, you know, coming into this port which is hardly noticed by anybody. And and the people they, they were saying, where is this place? What is the name of this place is this Canton? And that of course, these people would not be able to speak Portuguese. And they only pointed to the temple and said Macau Ma because the name in Chinese is the temple, the temple very, very important Ma which is the temple's name. And the Portuguese guy said, OK, so this is Macau, right? So they went back and then they actually produce maps, you know, now having putting us on the on the map. And so this there are so there's so much history. It's so rich in terms of storytelling that we can utilize. And this is the, this is what we also deem as the Sea Silk Road, one of the one of the Sea Silk Road ports which has been even recognized by the country. So we can develop also a lot. And which is why my project with Tom done because there is of course the Silk Road on the North and, but there's also the Silk Road, you know, along the sea coast and which is also all the things that we can utilize and then we can all work together. Um But we are not just here to talk about history, we want to talk about what's next. As you have asked me from the beginning, we want to bring even the artist. So what am I doing at a, a site? This is a huge area. There are all these um older shipyard um buildings that are now basically, you know, vacated. Um They're like any, you know, kind of older part of the kind of old cities that people want to go in and you, there's the preservation effort. But at the same time, you want to commercialize and you want to activate it. My proposal to the government is I want to create a artist village which is therefore something relevant to all of you. I want all the creative minds, all the people who want to basically utilize, you know, a place for you to explore, bring your ideas, but then, you know, overlay it with all sorts of different cultures and influences and you know, inspirations and we can work from here and then we will build a whole ecosystem. We want to have the studios here, we want to have the art fairs here. We want to, you know, bring festivals here. Fancy. You are speaking to a room full of people who can help you do that. These are what, what, what you were talking about is designing future and that's what everyone in this room is working on. That's what we've been talking about all day. I can't wait to come back in 10 years. You, you were 10 months, I don't have to wait 10 years. You were clearly a woman of passion and determination and I'm quite sure you're gonna get there. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us at. Thank you very much.