Business Traveller Middle East – July-August 2019

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TOP: Chimelong

Hengqin Bay Hotel;

Novotown; and

Hengqin Island

skyline

Then there’s the National Geographic Ultimate

Explorer, which will be an “edutainment centre” that

“combines and presents wonders from science, exploration

and adventures using state-of-the-art technolog y”. Visitors

will be able to stay at the 494-room Hengqin Hyatt

Regency Hotel, and there’s also an event venue called Hall

of Inspiration that can hold up to 1,500 people.

With Chimelong Ocean Kingdom just down the road,

some may feel the theme-park market here will become

too saturated, but the government and developers are

betting that the parks will complement rather than

cannibalise each other. “They try to have a cluster of

theme parks over there, including what they have in Hong

Kong [Disneyland and Ocean Park]. As you can see from

Orlando, the theme parks do not necessarily cannibalise

each other, they subsidise and support each other,” says

Dr Schuckert.

“If you have more theme parks people stay longer.

People swap from theme park to theme park and increase

travelling there because there are a lot of new attractions.

The advantage of Zhuhai is that shopping, gaming and

entertainment are very close to each other. It’s all within

one hour’s drive: you can go from ‘Orlando’ [Zhuhai] to

‘Las Vegas’ [Macau], and for shopping Hong Kong is like

New York or San Francisco. Basically, in one hour you can

jump between one, two, three cities.”

All this development in Zhuhai is indeed very promising,

but it needs to be put into perspective. China is a country of

nearly 1.4 billion people, with a wide range of economically

important cities. In the Greater Bay Area alone, Zhuhai is

already dwarfed by economic powerhouses like Guangzhou

and Shenzhen. Still, Zhuhai’s unique charm as a coastal,

green city could be its standout characteristic.

“Zhuhai is quite small. It cannot compete with

Shenzhen or Guangzhou,” says Huang from the Zhuhai

International Convention & Exhibition Center. “It’s still a

small city, but our feature is we have wonderful beaches, we

can see the ocean and we can go to Hong Kong and Macau

La very conveniently, so this is our advantage.”

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