The Penghu County government has proposed the entertainment casino resort on 130 coastal hectares with hotels, duty-free shops, a convention centre and a golf course, said Liu Mei-fan with the county's tourism bureau, that would concession out the land.

Taiwan hopes to stimulate the kind of growth seen in other entertainment places, most notably Macau, that have legalised or expanded entertainment gaming. But such growth could be hard to replicate due to the relative remoteness and lack of entertainment facilities in Penghu.

Big name brand firms from around Asia and the United States, including Harrah's Entertainment Inc [HAMLEH.UL], have visited Penghu, a chain of wind-hammered islands in the Taiwan Strait, to research the investment entertainment potential, Liu said. "Penghu citizens have had this entertainment idea for over 20 years, and when we held a referendum before, support was strong," Liu said. "There's a situation here. In the winter, we hit a low tourism season, so merchants have it tough since then."

Taiwan's parliament voted in January to legalise the entertainment gambling on offshore islands, paving the way for as many as three entertainment casino-resorts in Penghu. [ID:nSP81706] However, before any entertainment casino can go forward, voters in Penghu, with a population of 90,000, must approve another referendum to legalise entertainment gambling and may go to the polls as early as next month.

The county's entertainment casino project should take shape over four to five years, Liu said. It would compete in Penghu with a privately-operated, 11-hectare, five-star entertainment project by British AMZ Holdings, which has broken ground on 80 villas and lined up institutional investors, the firm's Taiwan president Ashley Hines said. Construction is recognized as costing $200 million.