Sustainable Development Strategy for Casino Industry of Hualien Area

Been long a controversial issue. Gambling proponents usually took the gambling industry in Las Vegas as example and argued that casino liberalization at Las Vegas, has attracted tremendous tourism benefits and brought economic prosperity to the surrounding region. They questioned why Hualien shouldn’t follow the path to success in Las Vegas to resolve poverty and economical depression commonly occurred in Hualien area. In Taiwan, Hualien enjoys the best development in infrastructure and various industries, visiting crowd of millions of every year, match every large-scale activity that the government of Hualien County plans elaborately (such as the main road of star light, the activity that the aboriginal holds a memorial ceremony for in bumper harvest year .etc.) Due to tourism downturn in recent years, as a result aggravating the budget deficit of local government, casino establishment is urgently considered as a way to prosper local economic activities. The policy and legislation of Taiwan government towards this issue remain conservative. Howe, most advanced countries in the world view liberalization and legalization of gambling as an effective method to regulate the long-existing, problematic industry. It is believed that casino liberalization in Taiwan is about a matter of time. Casinos will be legally established at the time of ripeness in the near future, Based on this assumption, this study summarizes preliminarily a number issues potentially present on the development of gaming business at Hualien with respect to infrastructure and tourism development at Hualien according to the analyses of reviewing the literature en the definition and categories cf casino, influence of gaming industry in all aspects, and current situation and perspective of tourism development at Hualien. This study firstly employed Participatory Local Appraisal (PLA) to form a consensus from local resident for sustainable development of Hualien area. Then, SWOT, TOWS matrix analysis, expert judged Fuzzy Delphi method to determine the most valuable issues on the development of casino industry at Hua1ien in both respects.