Macau: Four Seasons Hotel opens in Macau with new casino
[ 2008-08-29
]
Macau, China, 29 Aug – Since Thursday Macau has had 31 casinos in operation after the opening of the Four Seasons Hotel and the Plaza Casino located in the Venetian complex on the Cotai strip, between the islands of Coloane and Taipa.
The new hotel unit, which cost 8 billion patacas, has 360 rooms, restaurants and new shopping centre covering 19,600 square metres.
The Plaza Casino covers an area of 5,000 square metres with 175 gaming tables and 231 slot machines.
The Four Seasons is another one of a group of hotels, owned by Las Vegas Sands, to be built in the Cotai area over the next few years.
Hotels are due to be built belonging to the Sheraton, St. Regis, Hilton, Traders, Conrad, Raffles, Swiss Hotel, Intercontinental, Holiday Inn, Cosmopolitan Fairmont and Shangri-La hotel chains, which will be in operation in 2010 with a total of 20,000 rooms.
At the opening of the Four Seasons, the chairman of Las Vegas Sands, Sheldon Adelson, said that the group’s new investments would create a further 80,000 jobs in Macau, which would be preferentially offered to residents of the territory.
Adelson said that his group, which is building casinos in Singapore, was also interested in opening casinos in India and announced that it was available to invest between US$12 and US$14 billion in that country.
William Weidner, chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, said that the group’s development plans in the Cotai area were behind by around six months due to the restrictive measures implemented by the Macau government in relation to new casino projects in the territory.
Weidner also called for urgent improvements to the public transport network in Macau, namely construction of the light railway and expansion of Macau international airport.
Las Vegas Sands, which owns the Sands casino and the Venetian Macau casino-resort, over four years has invested 44 billion patacas in Macau according to company figures.
The Macau Post reported Friday that in the first year of operation the Ventian Macau resort posted gross profit of 17.44 billion patacas (US$2.18 billion).
In 2004, when the monopoly on gaming and gaming held by Stanley Ho’s Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau (STDM) ended, there were 15 casinos in Macau. (macauhub)
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