Casino Destinations in Asia Compared

Macau, Singapore, Manila, Genting and more: what this page compares

Asia's casino destinations are strikingly different from one another, and the differences go well beyond the games on the floor. Macau is a Chinese special administrative region with dozens of casino resorts. Singapore deliberately limited itself to two. The Philippines built a whole gaming district on reclaimed land in Manila Bay. Malaysia has exactly one legal casino, on a mountain top. South Korea has 17 casinos but keeps almost all of them for foreign passport holders. Goa's casinos include several floating on the Mandovi River, and Cambodia's casino industry exists almost entirely for visitors⁶.

This page compares them side by side: how many casinos each place has, where they are, who is allowed through the doors, what ID you need, what it costs to get in, and how old you have to be. It does not rank them. The right destination depends on where you are from, what you want to play, and whether you are traveling on a local or foreign passport, because in much of Asia those two passports open very different doors.

If you want the wider picture of who can enter casinos across the region and the rules inside, see casinos in Asia, and for the games themselves, which casino games are allowed in each jurisdiction.

Macau: the only place in China where casinos are legal

Macau holds a unique position: it is the only location in china offering legalized casino gaming¹. That single fact explains why the former Portuguese colony grew into one of the largest gaming markets in the world, with casino resorts lining the Cotai Strip and crowding the peninsular old town.

The practical basics are simple. Casinos are open 24 hours, and the legal age of entry is 21². Many casinos also have restaurants serving international cuisine, so a visit can be as much about eating and wandering between resorts as about gambling; the tourism office itself promotes casino-hopping as a sightseeing activity⁹. For more on hours across the region, see casino opening hours.

Macau's casino landscape has a long history. A gaming concession contract from 1997 already listed nine venues operating under license, including Casino Lisboa, Macau Palace Casino, Jai Alai Casino, Kam Pek Casino, Oriental Casino, Golden Dragon Casino, the Hyatt casino, Triumph Casino and the Holiday Inn casino¹⁰. Some of those names are long gone, but the Lisboa remains a landmark, and the industry that grew from those nine venues now dwarfs them.

One thing worth knowing: casinos are now Macau's only public gambling. Horse racing was abolished, and all public gambling other than casinos has disappeared, the last of it going after July 2018³. So if you are in Macau, the casino floor is the whole show.

For a deeper look at the rules, see gambling in Macau.

Singapore: two licensed casinos and a levy for locals

Singapore took the opposite approach from Macau: rather than letting a casino industry grow, it legalized exactly two. Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa are the only two licensed casino gaming services operators in the country¹¹. The law itself caps the number at two⁴.

The entry rules split sharply by status. Foreign visitors walk in free. Singapore citizens and permanent residents must pay an entry levy: SGD 150 for every consecutive period of 24 hours in the casino, or SGD 3,000 for a valid annual membership⁴. The levy is a deliberate deterrent, designed to make casual local visits expensive. The minimum age for entry is 21¹³.

Singapore's legal gambling is otherwise narrow. The legalized forms are:

• social gambling
• betting with Singapore Pools
• casino gambling at those two resorts
• jackpot machine gambling in private clubs¹⁴

Everything else is off-limits, and the state licenses every permitted operator¹¹.

Inside the casinos, both cash and e-payments are accepted as means of paying bets¹¹. Credit betting is prohibited, with one exception: a licensed casino may extend credit to premium players, or to players who are neither citizens nor permanent residents of Singapore¹¹. In practice, that means foreign visitors can be assessed for credit at the cage, while locals cannot.

For a head-to-head look at the two properties, see Marina Bay Sands vs Resorts World Sentosa, and for the country picture, gambling in Singapore.

Manila: Entertainment City on reclaimed land along Manila Bay

The Philippines went big. Entertainment City, a gaming and resort district built on reclaimed land along Manila Bay, is home to several of the country's largest integrated resorts. The licensed casino resorts there sit along Asean Avenue and Roxas Boulevard in Tambo, Parañaque City, just south of central Manila¹⁵. This is where you will find the big-name properties that put Manila on the casino map, and it is the place most visitors mean when they talk about gambling in Manila. For the district in detail, see Entertainment City Manila casinos.

Casinos are not confined to Entertainment City, though. The Waterfront Manila Hotel and Casino sits in the heart of Manila's business, cultural, shopping and entertainment centers, offering a casino alongside the hotel⁷. So the choice in Manila is between the huge purpose-built resorts on the bay and older hotel casinos closer to the center of town.

For comparisons between the biggest properties, see Okada Manila vs Solaire and Solaire Resort, and for the national picture, gambling in the Philippines.

Genting Highlands: Malaysia's only legal casino, non-Muslims and 21+ only

Malaysia has exactly one legal casino, at Genting Highlands, operating as Resorts World Genting⁶. Perched in the mountains about an hour from Kuala Lumpur, it is a self-contained resort town built around the casino, with hotels, a theme park, an arena and malls all connected on one mountaintop.

The entry rules are unusual in two ways. First, everyone must be 21 or above, regardless of nationality and race¹⁶. Second, Malaysian citizens must be non-Muslim; the non-Muslim requirement applies to Malaysian citizens only, so foreign visitors are not asked about religion at the door¹⁶.

Getting there is part of the experience. The Awana SkyWay cable car connects the resort to the Genting Highlands Premium Outlets below and links to the older Genting SkyWay line, with stops serving the Arena of Stars, the Genting SkyWorlds Hotel and the Genting SkyWorlds Theme Park⁵. The main gaming floor, SkyCasino, sits in the SkyAvenue mall, near the Genting Rewards counters and the Skytropolis indoor theme park⁵.

For more, see the casino at Genting Highlands, Genting Highlands vs Resorts World Sentosa, and gambling in Malaysia.

South Korea: 17 casinos, 16 of them foreigners-only

South Korea has 17 casinos in total, and 16 of them are foreigner-only¹⁷. The rule at those 16 is blunt: passport required, Koreans not admitted¹⁷. Staff check passports to verify nationality at the door¹⁸. The minimum age is 19, and all casinos require neat attire¹⁷. For what to wear, see casino dress codes in Asia.

The one exception is Kangwon Land, in Jeongseon County, Gangwon Province. It is the only casino in South Korea that admits Korean citizens⁶, and it was the first casino-style hotel in the country open to both Korean nationals and overseas visitors⁸. It is also the largest casino in South Korea¹⁹, and visitors must be 19 or older²⁰. Because it is the only place in the country where locals can gamble, it draws heavy domestic traffic.

Among the foreigners-only casinos, size bragging rights are contested. Inspire Entertainment Resort, next to Incheon airport, is described as Korea's largest foreigner-only casino²¹, and the Paradise Casino Incheon Airport branch is described the same way²². Either way, the Incheon cluster, close to Seoul's main international gateway, has become the center of gravity for foreign gamblers, with properties like Paradise City Incheon, Inspire Casino Incheon and Paradise Casino Incheon Airport. Seoul itself has hotel casinos for visitors, such as Seven Luck Casino Gangnam COEX, Seven Luck Casino Seoul Dragon City and Paradise Casino Walkerhill, while Jeju island has several more, including Paradise Casino Jeju Grand, a foreigners-only facility⁸, and Jeju Shilla Hotel Casino.

For the national picture, see gambling in South Korea.

Goa: 10 licensed casinos, four land-based and six floating

India's casino action is concentrated in Goa, the small coastal state that licenses casinos while most of the country does not. There are an estimated 10 casinos in Goa, of which four are land-based and the other six are offshore, floating casinos²³. The floating casinos are moored vessels on the Mandovi River near Panaji, and they have become one of the state's best-known attractions; the contrast between a riverboat gaming floor and a Macau mega-resort is about as stark as casino experiences get.

Entry to the floating casinos typically involves a boat transfer, and the land-based properties range from hotel casinos to dedicated gaming venues. For the two main operators compared, see Big Daddy vs Deltin casinos in Goa and Deltin casinos in Goa. For the wider Indian picture, see gambling in India, and for floating venues across the region, casino cruises and floating casinos in Asia.

Cambodia: casinos built for visitors, not for locals

Cambodia's casino industry exists almost entirely for foreigners. There are regulated gaming venues in the country that allow foreigners and tourists to gamble²⁴, but Cambodian citizens are not part of the customer base. The industry is primarily concentrated in areas like Poipet, on the Thai border, and Sihanoukville, on the coast²⁵. Poipet in particular functions as a border gambling town, drawing visitors across from Thailand, where casinos are illegal. For more on that pattern, see border casinos in Southeast Asia.

The best-known property is NagaWorld in Phnom Penh, the dominant casino in the capital. For the national picture, see gambling in Cambodia.

Where online gambling is banned across the region

The online picture across the region is mostly restrictive, and it matters even if you are just visiting.

Singapore has forbidden all forms of online gambling since 2014. Players who get caught gambling online face a fine of up to SGD 5,000 or a six-month prison sentence²⁶.

Japan's position is unusually strict: connecting from within Japan to gamble on an online casino is a crime even if the operator is legally run overseas²⁷. The fact that a site holds a license abroad does not protect a player sitting in Japan. Japan's first legal bricks-and-mortar casinos, under the integrated resort law, are a separate matter, with a minimum entry age of 20²⁸; see casino entry fee for Japanese residents and gambling in Japan.

Hong Kong is similarly closed: online casinos and online e-sports gambling platforms are neither licensed nor exempted there, so betting with them is illegal²⁹.

South Korea offers no licensing process for online casino games at all, since casino games are not allowed to be operated online in the state³⁰.

Macau, as noted above, has no online casino offering; its legal gambling is the licensed casino floor. For the full picture, see gambling in Macau, gambling in Hong Kong and gambling in Singapore.

Entry rules, minimum ages and ID checks at a glance

The table below pulls together the door rules for each destination. The single biggest thing to notice is how differently locals and visitors are treated: in Singapore locals pay to enter, in South Korea and Cambodia they cannot enter at all, and in Malaysia religion as well as age is checked for citizens.

A few practical points follow from the table. If you are a foreign visitor in Asia, you can enter casinos in every destination listed above, and only in Singapore and Cambodia is your status actually the easy one: in Singapore the levy does not apply to you, and in Cambodia the venues exist specifically for you. If you hold a local passport, the map shrinks fast. South Korean citizens have exactly one casino, Kangwon Land. Cambodian citizens have none. Malaysian citizens have one, subject to religion. Singapore citizens have two, at SGD 150 a day. Macau and the Philippines are the most open to their own citizens.

Whatever your passport, carry photo ID. Passport checks are standard at every foreigners-only casino in South Korea, and age checks happen everywhere. And if you are planning your trip around the games rather than the destinations, the pages on baccarat rules, blackjack rules, roulette rules and sic bo cover what you will actually find on the floors.