People are watching the Marina Bay area lit up as part of New Year’s Eve celebrations in Singapore on 31 December 2020.
Roslan Rahman | AFP | Getty Images
The World Economic Forum (WEF) aims to attract around 1,000 delegates to its summit in Singapore at the end of May and wants the iconic Marina Bay Sands complex to host, two sources familiar with the organization’s plans.
According to the sources, who do not want to be identified as negotiators, the plans for the May 25-28 event are still fluid given the uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic that is raging worldwide.
The WEF and Marina Bay Sands declined to comment. The Singapore Ministry of Commerce did not immediately comment.
The organizers say the annual meeting of political and business leaders was moved to Singapore in December from his usual home in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, from where he has his informal name.
If it went ahead as planned, the event would be the first global conference since Covid-19 began distributing widely in early 2020. The WEF’s previous summit in Davos in January 2020 was one of the last and attracted 3,000 delegates and thousands. of others for events.
WEF is targeting about 1,000 delegates in Singapore, according to sources, possibly up to 1,800 if conditions allow. The sources added that the ordinary events – which in recent years have increased the population of the Alpine city of Davos from 10,000 to about 30,000 – have significantly decreased.
Yet there is a lot of uncertainty. Singapore, a 5.7 million South Asian island nation, has largely closed its borders to visitors for almost a year and has imposed strict quarantine measures on returning residents.
The rise of more contagious virus variants has led the city-state to impose even more curbs on some countries in recent weeks.
WEF organizers hope that participants will be able to avoid quarantines by rigorous testing and by keeping a “bubble” cut off from the local population. Singapore will launch a limited version of this scheme later this month, and also said it will consider the 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 local residents, but said specific details were still being worked out.
The sources said that the organization should find the venue for this WEF bubble, where participants can also eat, sleep and mix.
Marina Bay Sands, owned by Las Vegas Sands of the late billionaire Sheldon Adelson, is the most globally recognizable building on the rich city’s skyline, appearing regularly on postcards and other tourist items.
It looks like a surfboard that sits on top of three towers, and has more than 2,500 rooms and suites, a casino, shops and restaurants, as well as conference and exhibition facilities that can accommodate more than 45,000 delegates.
A virus-resistant business travel facility being built in a conference center near the airport could also be a place to house WEF travelers, authorities said.