With the 24/7 endless opening hours for casinos in Macao, hundreds of millions of tourists have been attracted to pay a visit to this “Eastern Monte Carlo”. While most of the people are seeing how successful Macao is, there are still some other perspectives that we can pay more attention to as the casino boom has brought quite huge changes to this small quiet island.

Opening up the gaming industry in 2002, the Macao Government authorized three gaming concessionaires among casino entrepreneurs. Later, the concession licenses were granted to six casino companies. They are: Sociedade de Jogos de Macao (SJM), Wynn Resorts, Las Vegas Sands, Galaxy Entertainment Group, the partnership of MGM Mirage and Pansy Ho Chiu-king and the partnership of Melco and Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd’s (PBL). This move brought about new competition and improvement in the Macao economy, and helped Macao get out of the economic downturn which had plagued the city for years under the previous Portuguese government. The newly entered external powers terminated the 40-year monopoly in the casino business and ushered in the diversified development of the gaming industry. Different from the traditional type of casinos in Macao which emphasized gambling only, the new players were known for their focus on establishing a world leisure and amusement center, in order to bring more individuals and families to the venue and enjoy the magnificent buildings and high standard hostel services.

In the past before this boom of the gaming industry, Macao had four main businesses -- manufacturing, tourism, construction and finance. Most of the people were engaged in manufacturing industries. According to Statistics and Census Service (SCS) in 2001, the employed population in manufacturing industries, wholesale and retail trade and gaming and service industry were 28%, 19% and 14% respectively. Nevertheless, by announcing the casino opening up policy in 2001, Edmond Ho, ex-Chief Executive of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR), stated that “the gambling industry should be the leader of all industries, and the service industry would be the body and the other industries would coordinate the development.”

Since 2004 after the grand opening of Sands Macao, there has been more and more labor force engaging in the gaming industry, the employed population started shifting from the manufacturing industry to the gaming and customer service fields. According to the Macao SCS, in the fourth quarter of 2012, there were 29.4% of the population in Macao working in the gaming and customer service industries while 17.8% is working in hotels, restaurants and similar activities. However, there was only 3.4% working in manufacturing industries. As a result many traditional distinctive industries have disappeared in Macao.