Casino magnate Stanley Ho is considering a US$500 million plan to develop a ski resort in north-east China, a move that would expand his businesses beyond gambling, ferries and hotels in Macau and Hong Kong.

Huge casino investment
The government of Jilin province, whose capital Changchun will host the 2007 Asian Winter Games, approached Mr Ho's Shun Tak Holdings Ltd with the plan. The project 'is still at a preliminary stage of our investment review. There has been no development plan presented to the board or any feasibility study performed' although a letter of intent has been signed and Shun Tak's shares closed up 3.8 percent.

Mr Ho lost his four-decade monopoly on gambling in Macau this year when the former Portuguese enclave, now a special administrative region of China, awarded casino licenses to Las Vegas billionaires Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson. They and Mr Ho have each pledged to invest about US$500 million upgrading the city's casinos, hotels and other leisure facilities in Macau, a city of 438,000 people whose government gets about two-thirds of its income from gambling-related levies. Shun Tak operates high-speed ferries between Macau and Hong Kong and invests in hotels and other businesses.

Increased disposable income
Skiing is gaining popularity in China as incomes rise. For Ho, whose casinos increasingly cater to Chinese tourists, the project may offer a new way to tap their growing affluence. This year he lost his four-decade monopoly on gaming in Macau as the former Portuguese enclave, now part of China, awarded licenses to Las Vegas billionaires Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson.

China has about 20 ski resorts, mostly in its northeast provinces. Yabuli International Ski Resort in Heilongjiang province, next door to Jilin, claims to be the biggest. It has 11 runs exceeding 1 kilometer (0.6 mile), with one run of 5 kilometers - Asia's longest, it claims on its Web site. Still, the 1,500 skiers-an-hour capacity of its nine lifts makes it small by international standards. China's ski centers, which include several locations around Beijing, rate only two stars on the Web site of the Ski Club of Hong Kong, compared with four for resorts in Japan and South Korea and five for top-rated Whistler in Canada.

There are six ski centers around Beijing. The newest is the Nanshan Ski Resort, opened last month by Liu Yongxing, chairman of China's biggest feed maker, East Hope Group. Liu, the nation's eighth-wealthiest man according to Forbes magazine, spent 200 million yuan developing the resort after his 27-year-old son took up skiing while studying in the U.S.

Indoor skiing in China
China also has indoor runs on artificial snow. A complex 30 minutes' drive from the center of Shanghai boasts a 380-meter (415-yard) run down a gentle slope built inside a 10-hectare (25-acre) stadium.

The center, which cost 120 million yuan to build, offers 90 minutes' skiing on weekdays for 100 yuan, including equipment, and 120 yuan at weekends. On a recent winter weekend, the stadium was packed with an estimated 800 people, many seeing snow for the first time. The snow produced by its machines has the feel of crushed ice, rather than powder.

China's tourism chiefs probably hope the center's customers will develop a taste for the real thing, boosting efforts to develop the nation's leisure industries. Tourism industry revenue rose 10 percent to almost 500 billion yuan last year, with domestic travel accounting for almost three-quarters.

[Source: International Herald Tribune]

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