GGRAsia – Japan opens applications for cities to host a casino resort

Japan opens applications for cities to host a casino resort

Oct 01, 2021 Newsdesk Japan, Latest News, Top of the deck

The Japanese government has opened the application period for local authorities to pitch as host for a casino resort, and announced the weighting it will give when scoring such requests.

Under the liberalisation programme, up to three resorts will be permitted nationally. Currently, only three local communities are in the running for respectively hosting a large-scale integrated resort (IR). They are: Osaka, Nagasaki, and Wakayama.

On Thursday, the Japan Tourism Agency, an external bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, affirmed the application timetable for local governments to make their respective pitch.

The window is from 9.30am local time, on Friday (October 1), until 6.15pm, on April 28 next year.

Applications will be judged out of a possible 1,000 points, under criteria set out by the national government on December 18, 2020.

There are five key criteria when judging local-government applications, according to information collated by GGRAsia’s Japan correspondent.

They are: the resort’s contribution to the attractiveness and international competitiveness of Japan’s inbound tourism market as a whole (450 points); the ability of the resort to conduct business in a “continuing and safe” way (200 points); the economic and social effects nationally (150 points); mitigation measures relating to gambling harm (150 points); and how casino earnings are employed in the public interest (50 points).