SINGAPORE: Two recently opened integrated resorts (IRs) in Singapore are serving their customers more than 70,000 meals a day, providing an attractive opportunity for New Zealand food and beverage companies.
Marina Bay Sands and its more populist counterpart Resorts World Sentosa opened a year ago and in their first nine months of operation contributed NZ$4 billion towards Singapore’s nominal gross domestic product. That puts the two IRs on track to surpass the NZ$5.8 billion they were jointly expected to generate by 2015.
The mega resorts, which are virtually cities in their own right, include floors of upmarket hotel rooms, shops, restaurants, swimming pools, gardens and entertainment options including casinos.
Marina Bay Sands, which cost NZ$8.7 billion to build, is already looking for additional land to expand.
Many of the resorts’ bars and restaurants are staffed by celebrity chefs from around the world.
The food and beverage sector already accounts for more than half of New Zealand’s exports to Singapore, which is New Zealand's seventh largest trading partner.
Singapore is heavily reliant on food imports and Ziena Jalil, NZTE’s Trade Commissioner in Singapore, says the success of its IRs is further fuelling demand.
“They are looking for reliable supplies of safe, high quality food to feed the growing number of tourists coming to Singapore. New Zealand has a positive image in Singapore and the growth of the IRs is an exciting opportunity to leverage that advantage.”
Central Otago winery Misha’s Vineyard is already capitalising on the opportunity.
A specially branded Pinot Noir – Misha’s Vineyard Lucky 8 – is served in the Marina Bay Sands High Rollers Lounge and its wines are also available in a number of the resort’s other bars and restaurants.
The branding and the back label story describes the Chinese gold-mining that occurred on the Central Otago site in the 1880s and also the amazing occurrence of the number 8 on the vineyard – a very auspicious number in Chinese culture.
Misha’s Vineyard has trained around 50 staff at the resort to introduce and discuss its wines. It also warehouses wines in Singapore to enable a very fast transit of wines to the Resort so that their requirements are met in a timely fashion given the shipping times of wines from New Zealand.
Tourism is growing rapidly in Singapore with a record 11.6 million visitors arriving there in 2010 and injecting NZ$20 billion in to the economy. Other parts of the economy are also expanding with exports expected to grow by eight to ten percent this year.
Source: Strait Times
