Celebrating Felix Unger Day, November 13, this year’s odd couple is Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler and the casino business. I ran into Wheeler at the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival in Bali last month. (Full disclosure: I worked on a handful of Lonely Planet guidebooks earlier this century.) Recent arrests in China of employees of James Packer’s Crown Resorts employees peaked interest in the Asian casino business for Wheeler, who has lived in Australia since landing there to finish the initial Lonely Planet journey from London with his co-founder and wife Maureen in 1972. Wheeler asked a quintessential question about the gaming industry: How much does the casino business rely on VIPs, star entertainers and champagne glamor, and how much does it rely on “poor small punters who generally shouldn’t be gambling at all because the money should be feeding their kids?” With his outsider perspective and my view from the inside, we talked out an answer to the question that surprised me.

The industry’s answer is simple. Gaming is a form of entertainment that should be enjoyed responsibly. Moreover, the industry says that it has largely moved beyond simply providing green felt tables and slot machines to offering comprehensive entertainment and leisure options.

Today’s Las Vegas Strip casinos get about two-thirds of their revenue from non-gaming activities. Wheeler, who sold Lonely Planet in 2011 and now keeps busy writing, traveling and working with the family’s Planet Wheeler foundation on projects around the developing world, observed after our conversation in his diary that Las Vegas “has shifted from gambling to entertainment, business meetings and conferences, food, hotels. All the stuff you used to get free, you now pay for.” With business customers, it’s company money paying, and few things encourage spending more than other people’s money.

Macau, which never gave much away, unless you were a high roller but hasn’t cracked the code on business meetings, gets just 6% of its revenue from non-gaming activities. Local government’s Five Year Plan calls for non-gaming revenue to reach 9% by 2020. The most recent new Macau resorts feature amusement park style attractions at Melco Crown’s Studio City, Jeff Koons’ US$34 million “Tulips” headlining the art collection at Steve Wynn’s Wynn Palace and a half-scale Eiffel Tower at Sheldon Adelson’s Parisian Macao. All three aim to boost non-gaming spending, with Studio City and Parisian focused squarely on the mass market.

These changes in emphasis coincide with a 50% decline in Macau’s VIP revenue since 2013. VIP’s share of total gaming revenue has plunged from above 70% to below 50% amid China President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption crackdown and a slowing mainland China economy. Macau has a relatively negligible local market – local government workers may only visit casinos during Chinese New Year – and presently relies on mainland Chinese visitors for an estimated 90% of gaming revenue.

Macau’s lost VIP take amounts to US$15 billion a year. Some of that spending moved to other casino destinations such as Manila and even Saipan, while others such as Singapore and South Korea have tracked Macau’s plunge. In South Korea, locals can only play at one remote casino while 16 others only allow foreigners to gamble. The government hopes to get casino developers to create US$1 billion-plus integrated resorts, but the ban on local players crimps investment and potential success. Under these conditions, one IR license has gone begging and another licensee has had to find new financial backers.

Singapore’s casinos have the world’s richest local market to tap, constrained by a S$100 (US$70) entry tax on citizens and residents, plus a tax advantage for VIP play but a virtual ban on junket promoters to source high rollers. So, Singapore increasingly focuses on VIPs from its Southeast Asian neighbors. More fundamentally, Singapore’s integrated resorts try to tempt that local market and more than a million tourists a month with billions of dollars in non-gaming attractions, including Universal Studios at Genting’s Resorts World Sentosa, two theaters, a showcase shopping mall and the rooftop SkyPark at Marina Bay Sands, plus unique MICE spaces and Michelin star chefs at each.

Australia went all-in on Chinese VIPs, but as that market contracts while overall Chinese visitor numbers surge, Australia now wants to create resorts to capture tourists seeking vacations with a side of gambling. Yet Australia is also the country with the world’s largest gaming spending per head, largely thanks to its ubiquitous slot machines, known as pokies, found mainly in neighborhood pubs and clubs, often run by community organizations.

“So,” Tony Wheeler said, “it’s not right to talk about the casino industry. It’s really a different business in every market.” That’s absolutely true, but it took an outsider who’s traveled the world and created a global brand to tell me what’s hidden in plain sight about the industry I cover. Maybe it’s not Wheeler and casinos that are the odd couple after all.