Japan’s Yokohama city announced on Friday that it would hold on November 30 the first meeting of the “Yokohama IR operator selection committee”.
According to information collated by GGRAsia’s Japan correspondent, that committee is mandated by the local basic policy on integrated resorts (IRs), as large-scale casino complexes with tourism facilities are known in Japan.
On October 13, authorities in Yokohama said they would conduct a fresh request-for-concept (RFC) phase in the community’s tilt at getting a casino resort. The new RFC phase began that day and will run until the end of November. A request-for-proposal (RFP) phase would then follow at some stage after that.
The members of the operator-selection committee are drawn from the academic sector. They are said to have expertise in, variously, construction, urban development, economics, corporate management, gambling addiction issues, public safety, tourism, and meetings incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) business.
The agenda for the first meeting includes the selection of the person to take a chairing role.
According to earlier information collated by GGRAsia’s correspondent, as part of the new RFC phase, the city is going to have further discussions with private-sector firms – including casino operators – that had involvement in an earlier RFC phase before the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Upon that fresh discussion, Yokohama would revise its estimates of the economic effects of a local IR, and the schedule for realising one.
On November 17, Yokohama held the first meeting of a local body called the Yokohama Innovation IR Council. Its main purpose is to bring together public-sector agencies and institutions and private-sector ones in that Japanese city, to develop local consensus and agreement about having there a casino complex
