Macau keeps raising the minimum bets at its tables. “If you’re betting $50 a hand, you can’t play in my casino on weekends,” one executive told me. In the short run, it’s about maximizing profits from a limited number of tables. But in the long run, high costs for play, along with expensive hotel rooms and shopping, may alienate visitors, good news for less expensive regional rivals such as the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes and author of Hong Kong On Air
