<div><p>Cigarette smoke drifts upward as chain-smoking gamblers at the Casino Lisboa yell excitedly in Cantonese. Staff scurry back and forth with trays of milk tea while prostitutes circle an outer lobby in search of customers.</p><p>It is a no-frills operation at the Lisboa, one of Macau's best-known casinos, and the tired decor seems to have changed little since it was showcased in the 1974 James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun.</p><p>For decades, this was Macau's gaming scene -- monopolised by 88-year-old tycoon Stanley Ho -- until it opened to foreign competition in 2002.</p><p>A stream of Las Vegas-based gaming companies flooded into the former Portuguese colony, hoping to cash in on what promised to be a massive market of gambling-mad visitors from nearby Hong Kong and mainland China.</p><p>The newcomers built ostentatious casino hotels with thousands of rooms, dwarfing Macau's older venues. Money poured into the once sleepy city of half a million people and now gambling revenues have overtaken those in Las Vegas.</p><p>But the plan to transform Macau from Asia's seedy gambling den into a Vegas-style family entertainment hub has not matched its gaming success.</p><p>"It is the early stages of the whole entertainment offering in Macau," Davis Fong, director of the University of Macau's Institute for the Study of Commercial Gaming, told AFP.</p><p>"It's going to take some time for tourists and locals to accept it."</p><p>Lingering doubts about the idea re-ignited last month when Las Vegas Sands chairman Sheldon Adelson complained that ticket sales for the Cirque de Soleil show ZAIA at his Venetian hotel were "disappointing."</p><p>Adelson said Cirque de Soleil promised to "improve the show or replace it."</p><p>The world-renowned act, which usually plays to capacity crowds, was the linchpin in Macau's plan to become an entertainment and gaming hub.</p><p>The Montreal-based company disputes the accuracy of Adelson's comments, but said drawing a local Chinese audience to the show -- a mixture of dance and acrobatics set to music -- has been a challenge.</p><p>"ZAIA is the first and the only show of its kind in this unique market," spokeswoman Renee-Claude Menard said in an e-mail to AFP.</p><p>"There is no entertainment 'tradition' in Macau which makes the challenge even greater. It therefore requires very distinctive marketing approaches to ensure its success."</p><p>Menard said Cirque is making adjustments to the show, but "there has never been a question of replacing ZAIA."</p><p>By contrast, Cirque de Soleil has been a hit in Las Vegas.</p><p>Despite its label as America's Sin City, the Nevada desert metropolis offers a host of family-rated entertainment and top acts, including comedian Jerry Seinfeld, magician Criss Angel and singer Celine Dion. She finished a five-year nightly performance at the Caesars Palace in 2007.</p><p>Apart from attracting some local talent, Macau's sparse entertainment offerings include a few burlesque shows and a tacky harbourfront theme park.</p><p>A plan to build a version of the Playboy Mansion in Macau has reportedly been shelved while most casino operators remain conservative in their plans for new entertainment venues.</p><p>One hurdle is that Macau's 23-million annual visitors stay an average of 1.5 days, less than the average three to four night stay in Las Vegas.</p><p>"When someone spends three or four days in a place, they'll have a whole bunch of time to spend on other activities rather than just gambling," said Aaron Fischer, director of consumer and gaming research at brokerage CLSA.</p><p>"If you're only in Macau for one and a half days, most people are quite happy to spend that time gambling."</p><p>Even spending at the city's retail shops has fallen short of expectations.</p><p>"That is the easiest area to do well, but it hasn't," Fischer said.</p><p>It will take at least five or 10 years for the non-gaming business to reach an "acceptable level," if it happens at all, Fischer said.</p><p>Macau's success at the gambling tables is also its own worst enemy.</p><p>The city's government has worried aloud about social problems attached to a gambling economy, rising rent prices for local residents and youths dropping out of school to take casino jobs.</p><p>Meanwhile, alarmed at the amount of money that mainland Chinese were spending, Beijing clamped down last year by limiting the number of visits they could make to Macau.</p><p>Those restrictions have been relaxed, but are likely to return as Beijing moves to stem the city's runaway, gambling-driven, 29 percent annual growth, Fischer said.</p><p>In fact, the promise to turn Macau into an entertainment hub is largely aimed at placating Beijing and the city's government, rather than a hedge in case gaming revenues hit a rough patch, he added.</p><p>"It keeps the government happy," Fischer said.</p><p>"They won't close down Cirque de Soleil. The cost of the show is immaterial compared to the gambling revenues at The Venetian. It's a sideshow."</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=65748281&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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