Culture is the soul of a city and the connotation of its tourism. Among the integrated resort operators in Macao, MGM took the lead in supporting cultural tourism. Since its opening in 2007, MGM has always adhered to its lionheart, upholding “orginality+innovation+culture+tourism+technology+green”, to continuously enrich Macao’s cultural connotation. Apart from the unique iconic design of MGM’s hotels, the “MGM Art Space” is the first dedicated gallery space in a Macao integrated resort designed specifically for art and cultural exhibitions. In the Biennial of the Lions, 50 colourful, unique lion sculptures dressed elaborately by 50 Chinese and French artists were presented as a toast to the friendship between the two countries. While the “Dalinian Dancer” in the lobby and “Valkyrie Octopus” in the Grande Praça of MGM MACAU are legendary works by famous international artists. At MGM COTAI, the antique imperial carpets from the Qing Dynasty highlighted the artistic charm of exquisite traditional craftsmanship, while the Chairman’s Collection featured commissioned artworks by contemporary Chinese renowned artists. Through creativity in arts and culture, MGM China hopes to change Macao’s clichéd façade and make it a top destination for cultural tourism.

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In order to accurately understand the difference in nongaming development between Macao gaming companies and foreign gaming companies, this paper has selected nine typically large overseas companies to compare with the six gaming companies in Macao. This study demonstrates that the difference between the proportion of nongaming revenue of the six gaming companies in Macao and that of the nine overseas gaming companies is about 13%, which is lower than generally considered. Similar to these overseas companies, Macao’[KG-*3]s nongaming business includes hotels, catering, shopping and the like. On the other hand, Macao gaming companies do not offer casino management service, real estate development services, and online gaming, when compared with such overseas companies.

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The limited number of systematic and consistent studies available on the Philippine gaming industry and its development has proved to be an obstacle in understanding the underlying factors and dynamics driving the recent remarkable and rapid growth of integrated resorts, offshore gaming, and other notable events punctuating the sector during the five year pre COVID period from 2015 to 2019. This study attempts to address this knowledge deficit by illuminating some key issues and challenges surrounding the Philippines’ gaming industry using actor network theory and actor analysis and based on a large scale content analysis of news, trade, and industry media coverage over the same period. Findings reveal some crucial dimensions of uncertainty and vulnerabilities as well as actor network characteristics that, in aggregate, appear to shape the dynamics of forces directing the industry’s development. Imperatives for industry governance and policies are briefly discussed.

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As an important indicator of the industry competitiveness, customer loyalty has played an important role in promoting the high quality development of sports lottery, and significantly contributed to building a healthy and sustainable national public welfare lottery. A total of 1,734 sports bettors were recruited for the survey. The results showed that the sports bettors’ attitudinal loyalty scale with 7 items consisted of two factors: trust and affective commitment. On the other hand, the sports bettors’ behavioural loyalty scale with 3 items not only showed discriminate validity and reliability, but also could be used as a tool to evaluate the loyalty of such players. The Quiz type sports lottery players were analyzed and categorized into four groups: high loyalty, latent loyalty, low loyalty, and pseudo loyalty. The high loyalty had a high level of attitudinal and behavioural loyalty, the latent loyalty had a high level of attitudinal loyalty with a low level of behavioural loyalty, the pseudo loyalty had a low level of attitudinal loyalty with a high level of behavioural loyalty, and the low loyalty showed low levels in both loyalty. With the increase in age and income levels, the number of the low loyalty decreased while that of the pseudo loyalty increased. The years of betting, frequency and amount of the high loyalty and the pseudo loyalty were generally more than those of the low loyalty and the latent loyalty. Finally, both the high loyalty and the latent loyalty perceived more value than the pseudo loyalty and the low loyalty.

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Legislative provisions and judicial interpretations on gambling crimes in the Mainland have coexisted for a long time. The crime of gambling has been changed from only the crime of gambling, to 3 types of crimes, namely. gambling, opening a casino, and organizing participation in gambling abroad. The penalty has also changed from light to heavy. With regard to the severe situation of cross border gambling crimes, the mainland judicial organizations have formulated specific opinions on handling cross border gambling crimes, and comprehensive and specific provisions have been made on the identification and handling of cross border gambling crimes. The new organization participating countries in the eleventh amendment of the Criminal Law The crime of (territory) gambling refers to the act of organizing mainland citizens to participate in gambling outside (territory) with huge amounts or other serious circumstances; the amendment and improvement of mainland laws and judicial interpretations may have an impact on gambling in Macau. Understanding the relevant laws and judicial interpretations of the Mainland is of great significance to how Macau gaming operators and individuals avoid violating the laws and regulations of the Mainland and adapt to changes in the new business environment.

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Place image is the sum of the beliefs, perceptions, and impressions that residents hold about their living city. Sense of gain describes residents’ subjective evaluation of their lives in terms of dignity, decency, pursuit, and ideal. City development confidence refers to the degree people remain optimistic about the future of their living city. This study developed a model examining the influence of place image on residents’ sense of gain and city development confidence. It considers the current and future impact of local image from the perspectives of the residents and the city. The national strategy of Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area has brought unprecedented development opportunities to Zhuhai, and Zhuhai’s urban function and construction are bound to be greatly improved. Using Zhuhai as a case study, this study collected 320 valid questionnaires and tested the model using the structural equation modeling. The findings revealed that place image has a positive effect on residents’ place attachment and sense of gain, place attachment positively affects residents’ sense of gain, and place image has a positive effect on residents’ confidence in city development.

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The research aimed to examine the applicability of the 21 item SUS-TAS scale as well as to investigate the mediating role of overall attitude on the relationships between SUS TAS dimensions and resident support for sustainable tourism development. Based on the data collected from a gaming destination, the research confirmed that the 21 item scale yielded a reliable and valid seven dimensional structure. The results also revealed that, while the dimensions of perceived economic benefits, community centered economy, and ensuring visitor satisfaction had positive effects on overall attitude, perceived social cost had a negative effect. Overall attitude was found to mediate the relationships between the aforementioned dimensions and resident support. However, environmental sustainability, long term planning and maximizing community participation failed to influence overall attitude, and overall attitude was an irrelevant mediator between those factors and resident support. The findings shed some insights in both theoretical and practical implications.

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Through collecting and reviewing China’s tourism research on big data, this paper analyzed the application field, the major data sources and the research methods, in an attempt to provide references for the application of big data in China’s tourism. The research literature came from China Academic Journals full text database. The literature analysis primarily adopted the content analysis method. Through analyzing 123 empirical research articles on tourism big data included in the China Academic Journals full text database, it was found that the application of tourism big data in China mainly focused on the following five areas: tourist preference, tourist prediction, tourist flow analysis, tourist satisfaction and tourism marketing. The data sources were mainly from UGC (user generated content) data from such tourism websites as Ctrip, Qunar and Mafengwo and social platforms like Sina Weibo and Douban, image data from Flickr website, as well as Baidu index and mobile roaming data. This study argued that tourism big data might make up for some of the shortcomings of the traditional tourism research, but tourism big data also had its own major shortcomings. Researchers need to choose the right data sources and research methods according to their specific problems and research purposes to reduce the “noise” pollution of data.

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Natural tourism resources are an important part of tourism resources like humanities tourism resources, and are indispensable to the development of the tourism industry. Devoid of its natural resources, Macao will fail in its pursuit of diversified tourism products and visitors, and lose its practical significance in the creation of the world centre of tourism and leisure. Therefore, to make natural tourism resources sustainable, legal measures should be taken to establish an improved legal system through scientific planning and rational utilization to protect and manage the natural tourism resources.This study built its theoretical framework from relevant concepts, and integrated relevant laws in China for comparison. By sorting and listing out Macao’[KG-*4]s current laws concerning protection and administration of the natural tourism resources, the author attempted to find out the coordinated, common and consistent provisions, their shortcomings, and to provide references for improving future law making.

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