The Jewel casino once stood at the turquoise shores of Iririki Island — crowned with a white sign tempting tourists to cross the bay from Vanuatu’s capital city.
Australian businessmen and brothers Brendon and Mark Deeley bought the venue in March — and then promptly shut it down.
“We’re quite possibly the first people to ever purposely buy a casino to shut it down in a low-tax jurisdiction,” Brendon Deeley said.
“That’s a pretty cool thing to be able to say.”
The casino was a part of Iririki Island Resort, looking back towards Port Vila and its bustling daily life.
The Deeley brothers have turned it into a conference centre but say their decision to close the casino was about morals.
“Our motivation was actually that we don’t like casinos,” Brendon Deeley said.
“And certainly, we see the damage that they cause in society. For us, we didn’t want to be part of that.
“They tend to take money out of people’s families, out of people’s food, that people would otherwise spend.
“I can’t see a casino in the world that actually brings any good to the world.”
Iririki Resort, a short boat ride from Port Vila, was reopened and relaunched with the casino in 2016, after the devastation of Cyclone Pam the year before.
It was one of several to emerge in the South Pacific tourist destination, aiming to attract visitors from overseas.
But some say it sat awkwardly in a deeply Christian nation that maintains strong connections to its traditions.
It’s maybe no coincidence that the Deeley brothers — both Christians — shut the casino the day before Good Friday.
“The timing of that happening just before Easter certainly was I think a blessing for the people of Vanuatu,” Brendon Deeley said.
‘Trickle down’ tourism
The Jewel was marketed as a chance for tourists to have a flutter at their resort on a tropical holiday.
But the presence of casinos in Vanuatu has raised issues for the developing nation, where high inflation has increased the cost of living, according to the president of the Vanuatu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Antoine Boudier.
“As we all know, I’ve never seen any casino today losing any money,” he said.
“And usually it’s always in the service of the casino. So we have seen a lot of damage, a lot of people getting addicted to casinos.”
Brendon Deeley puts it this way: “The house always wins.”
“If you can win at a casino, the casino will go broke, right?” he said.
While casinos have increased in Port Vila, they have not gained as much traction elsewhere in the region, according to Western Sydney University’s Joseph Cheer, an expert in Pacific Island tourism industries.
But other Pacific countries — including Fiji, where a $FJD2 billion ($1.36 billion), 1,000-room casino has been proposed — have started looking at their tourism potential as they pursue higher-spending visitors.
“For countries in the Pacific, they’re trying to diversify their tourism markets,” Professor Cheer said.
“They don’t just want group travellers, or flop-and-drop travellers, who are going to fly in, stay at the resort and then do nothing else.
“What the Pacific Island countries want now are what’s called high-yield tourists — tourists who are going to spend a lot of money, who are going to stay a long time — and hopefully that trickles down into the local economy.”
But much of the research throws that “trickle-down” value into doubt, showing a lot of tourist spending stays in the resorts, Professor Cheer said.
“And questions are often raised [about] how much actually trickles out beyond the formal employment opportunities that are provided to local people,” he said.
The Jewel was an employer for ni-Vanuatu people — and staff have lost their jobs with the closure.
Brendon Deeley said as he didn’t buy the casino licence, he was never the employer of the Jewel’s former staff.
He believes the new conference centre — named Blue Lagoon — will ultimately create more jobs than the casino.
“The economic benefit and the employment benefit to Vanuatu will be far, far greater,” he said.
A throw of the dice?
As they shun the gambling industry, Iririki Resort’s new owners are also embracing another lucrative one.
Conferences are big business in the Asia-Pacific region. In Australia, the Business Events Council says its industry has a value of $36 billion.
“In cities like Singapore, Bangkok, Melbourne, Sydney, it’s a massive industry,” Professor Cheer said.
“Because you get people by the thousands, en masse. You might have a medical conference of 6,000 delegates converging onto the city.”
In Fiji, venues are already attracting business people to conferences.
And there are other conference venues already in Vanuatu — including the massive Chinese-government-funded National Convention Centre overlooking Port Vila.
While Brendon Deeley hopes the Blue Lagoon Conference Centre will bring more visitors to Vanuatu, others see some challenges.
The country’s tourism industry is trying to recover after COVID-19 border closures but is hampered by a trouble-plagued national airline.
Still, Mr Boudier thinks conferences could be a good avenue for businesses to try.
“By having the right marketing from the conference side of it, we could attract good corporate people,” he said.