Macau opens new Casino
Las Vegas rushes to grab a part of the top gambling centre
Las Vegas tycoons pile into Macau to win over the gamblers who are rushing into this booming Chinese Territory, once just an adjunct of Hong Kong.
A new casino in Macau built by a local billionaire, was jammed with thousands of gamblers when it opened recently. Fearing a takeover by tycoons from Las Vegas, local moneymen are combating their arrival with their own luxurious casinos, This one, the 5-floor Grand Lisboa, is shaped like a hugh lotus flower, and most of the gamblers were mainland Chinese who since last year have been the mainstay of the island. Macau, the former Portuguese enclave is the only place in China where casinos are legal.
The Grand Lisboa is owned by Hong Kong billionaire Stanley Ho, who held a monopoly on gambling in Macau for four decades until 2002. In the past few years, Las Vegas big names have been agressively expanding into the casino, luxury hotel and mega resort fields in Macau, with some of the biggest names like MGM Mirage Inc., Stephen Wynn and Sheldon Adelson, building there.
Formerly, the Ho casinos were smelly, dank, smoky and offered surly service, and that's when they even bothered. That is all to change now. Vegas style smiling waitresses will now be the order of the day, although it will be an uphill struggle to change the attitude of the reluctant servers once employed in the casinos.
The 52-story building in which the Lisboa is housed, will include a 430-room hotel to open later in the year, and the lobby is decorated with 580,000 Swarovski crystals, gold plated leaves and crystal balls. The casino itself displays lots of red plush and red carpet with silver light fixtures and more crystal beads.
This new approach to gambling will help attract conventioneers, shoppers and families who used to visit from Hong Kong just for the day, but now may be encouraged to spend a few days or a week in Macau, even if they don't gamble. Later this year, Sheldon Adelson plans to open the 3,000 suite Venetian Macau, the largest hotel casino in the world, which will include a convention centre and a mall.
Macau looks set to prosper from this battle between the giants of world gambling, with Ho entrenched in Macau with a massive property fortfolio. Land prices can only rise, but Las Vegas has money too. We shall wait and see. One thing is sure, gambling can't lose in this part of the world where people will bet on anything from two raindrops running down a window to the fall of a swallow.
