Tourist dream comes true

I&rsquom just back from Singapore. More specifically, I&rsquom just back from Resorts World Sentosa. Which is to say that I&rsquoll be describing what it felt like to see a tiny country in the making. Okay, I&rsquom exaggerating &mdash but not that much. Resorts World, which launched in January on the pleasure island of Sentosa off Singapore, has cost the Genting Group US $4.7 billion or about Rs 21,600 crore. If that makes no sense to you, never mind, but it might help to know that Singapore&rsquos 2008 GDP was US $182 billion.

If you&rsquove been reading the papers &mdash or at least kept track of travel agents&rsquo ads &mdash you&rsquoll already know that the &lsquointegrated resort&rsquo spread over 121 acres, which will offer you the &lsquoworld&rsquos largest marine life park&rsquo (coming up), the &lsquoworld&rsquos largest animatronic performance&rsquo (ditto), &lsquoAsia&rsquos largest column-free ballroom&rsquo (ready), and which purports to be the &lsquoultimate family destination&rsquo (sure), is the Next Big Thing in the tourism industry.

When our gang of 15-odd journos visited in early February, four of the six hotels were receiving visitors (Festive Hotel, Hard Rock Hotel, Hotel Michael and Crockford Tower Equarius and Spa Villas will open in Phase 2). The rides at the Universal Studios theme park &mdash featuring the world&rsquos tallest &lsquoduelling roller coasters&rsquo, the first sci-fi zone and the biggest collection of DreamWorks attractions &mdash whizzed overhead and droned around us in safety test runs. The casino &mdash strict Singapore&rsquos first &mdash was glitteringly ready but not formally open. (It eventually opened on February 14, Chinese New Year&rsquos Day, hosting some 75,000 visitors and earning, news reports later claimed, several million dollars in its first few days.)

It&rsquos easy to get carried away by the PR spiel &mdash and there&rsquos a lot of it over our two days, in the form of resort representative talk, tour guide lecture, press material, speeches by officials. Big money can, after all, buy the biggest names in the business revered architect Michael Graves designed the complex and has a hotel dedicated to him big-name glass artist Dale Chihuly&rsquos grandiose works are scattered casually across the place Joel Robuchon will introduce his culinary multinational business shortly celebrity chef Susur Lee will have a speciality restaurant ESPA, the spa world&rsquos poshest operator, will open a retreat&hellip

The last time I attended a preview of a project anywhere near as comparable &mdash the Las Vegas Sands Corp&rsquos massive &lsquoCotai Strip&rsquo development of Macau in 2007 &mdash I came away awed by the scale (of investment, ambition and engineering) but also grappling with a sense of unrealness, of the impossibility of purpose. (As it turned out, that project foundered in the recession, and is still far from complete.) But Resorts World feels different a genuine family holiday destination rather than an intimidatingly starry, merely outrageously expensive showpiece. Perhaps it&rsquos the resort&rsquos Director of Sales telling us about the road shows with Indian agents and the imminent tie-ups with Jet Airways perhaps it&rsquos the Indian food at a Universal Studios&rsquo dining outlet perhaps it&rsquos the clever design at the Festive Hotel where I&rsquom staying, with loft spaces for children and expandable couches in all rooms. Whatever, it all comes together as a believable, viable package. Which makes me think that I might know what you&rsquore doing this summer.