People watch as the Marina Bay area is lit up as part of Singapore’s New Year’s Eve celebrations on December 31, 2020.
Roslan Rahman | AFP | Getty Images
The World Economic Forum (WEF) aims to attract about 1,000 delegates to its Singapore summit in late May and wants the iconic Marina Bay Sands complex to host the event, said two sources familiar with the organization’s plans.
The sources, who declined to be identified because negotiations are ongoing, said plans for the May 25-28 event were still fluid, given the uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic that is plaguing the world.
WEF and Marina Bay Sands declined to comment. The Singapore Ministry of Commerce did not immediately comment.
The annual meeting of political and business leaders was moved from his usual home at the Swiss ski resort of Davos, where he takes his informal name, to Singapore in December due to security concerns about the virus, organizers said.
If proceeded as planned, the event will be the first global face-to-face conference since Covid-19 started to spread widely in early 2020. The previous WEF meeting in Davos in January 2020 was one of the last and attracted 3,000 delegates and thousands others for side events.
The WEF is targeting about 1,000 delegates in Singapore, the sources said, possibly up to 1,800, if conditions permit. The usual side events – which in previous years saw the population of the alpine city of Davos grow from 10,000 to about 30,000 – will be significantly reduced due to the virus, the sources added.
Still, there is a lot of uncertainty. Singapore, a Southeast Asian island nation of 5.7 million, has had its borders virtually closed to visitors for nearly a year and imposed strict quarantine measures on returning residents.
The emergence of more variants of infectious viruses has led the city-state to impose new restrictions on travel in some countries in recent weeks.
WEF organizers hope that participants will be able to avoid quarantines through rigorous testing and remain in a “bubble” isolated from the local population. Singapore is due 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 official at the Ministry of Commerce, said earlier this month that there would be measures to manage interactions between WEF participants and locals, but said specific details were still being worked out.
Finding a location for this WEF bubble, where participants can also eat, sleep and socialize, prompted the organization to choose Marina Bay Sands as possible hosts, the sources said.
Marina Bay Sands, owned by the late billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands, is the most globally recognized building on the horizon of the wealthy city-state, regularly featured on postcards and other tourist products.
Resembling a surfboard on top of three towers, it has more than 2,500 rooms and suites, a casino, shops and restaurants, as well as convention and exhibition facilities that can accommodate more than 45,000 participants.
A virus-proof business travel facility being built at a convention center near the airport could also be one of the places to host WEF travelers, officials said.