People watch the Marina Bay area light up as part of the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Singapore on December 31, 2020.
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The World Economic Forum (WEF) aims to attract nearly 1,000 delegates for its Singapore summit in late May and wants the iconic Marina Bay Sands complex to host the event, according to two sources familiar with the plans of the organization.
Sources, who did not want to be identified because negotiations are ongoing, said plans for the May 25-28 event were still fluid, given the uncertainty of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. all over the world.
The WEF and Marina Bay Sands declined to comment. The Singapore Ministry of Commerce did not comment immediately.
The annual meeting of political and business leaders moved from their usual home to the Swiss ski resort of Davos, from which it takes its informal name, to Singapore in December for security fears against viruses, they said the organizers.
If it goes ahead as planned, the event would be the first face-to-face global conference since Covid-19 began to be widely expanded in early 2020. The previous WEF summit in Davos in January 2020 was one of the last and attracted 3,000 delegates and thousands of others for side events.
The WEF targets about 1,000 delegates in Singapore, according to sources, up to 1,800 if conditions allow. The usual side events – which in previous years have seen the population of the alpine city of Davos increase from 10,000 to about 30,000 – will be significantly reduced due to the virus, the sources added.
However, there is a lot of uncertainty. Singapore, a 5.7 million Southeast Asian island nation, has had its borders largely closed to visitors for nearly a year and has imposed strict quarantine measures on returning residents.
The emergence of more infectious virus variants have led the city-state to impose more travel scrubs on some countries in recent weeks.
WEF organizers hope attendees can avoid quarantine by rigorous testing and staying in a “bubble” separate from the local population. Singapore will have to start testing a limited version of this scheme later this month and has also said it will consider relaxing travel restrictions for vaccinated travelers.
Alvin Tan, a senior Commerce Ministry official, said earlier this month there would be measures to manage interactions between WEF attendees and locals, but said specific details were still being worked out.
Finding a place for this WEF bubble, where attendees could also eat, sleep and mingle, has led the organization to head to Marina Bay Sands as potential hosts, according to sources.
Marina Bay Sands, owned by Las Vegas Sands, the late billionaire Sheldon Adelson, is the world’s most recognized building on the horizon of the city-rich state, appearing regularly on postcards and other tourist products.
It resembles a surfboard located on top of three towers, has more than 2,500 rooms and suites, a casino, shops and restaurants, as well as facilities for conventions and exhibitions that can accommodate more than 45,000 delegates.
A virus-proof business travel facility being built at a convention center near the airport could also be one of the places to accommodate WEF travelers, authorities have reported.