MGM Grand Macau, the joint venture between MGM Mirage – the Las Vegas based casino operator – and Pansy Ho, daughter of casino king Stanley Ho, had opened shop in Macau. The 35 storied, 600 rooms luxury hotel cum casino offers to the customers over 400 gambling tables, 800 slot machines and 16 private gaming rooms, making it one of the biggest casinos in Macau, in terms of revenue potential and capacity.

Macau’s casino scene was monopolized by Stanley Ho for over 40 years, but things have changed since 1999 when the Portuguese handed over Macau to Chinese rule. In 2001, China had opened up the casino industry to foreign investments, thus ending the Ho family’s dominance in the casino domain, and letting in foreign players such as America’s Wynn Resorts, Melco, and Las Vegas Sands to set up casino hotels in the city.

Through casinos like MGM Grand Macau, Pansy Ho intends to repeat Las Vegas, by attracting the richest casino gamblers to Macau amuse them with luxury shopping and entertainment as well. The hotel also includes a full fledged shopping center, convention center, luxury apartment complex, theater, and circus, which is under construction as of now. When asked by scribes the influx of casinos actually increases competition in the casino market, Pansy Ho said a number of casino players in the race only adds variety rather than pushing out any one out of business. Pansy Ho went on to add that it (foreign investments) only do good for the game and the casino industry at large.

Backing up Ho’s prediction is Jefferies analyst Lawrence Klatzkin, who also evinced confidence that the new MGM Grand Macau should fare well in the already crowded Macau’s casino industry. He further added that Macau’s casino market, instead of going saturated, will grow to a $15 billion one by the end of 2010. He underlines this projection by mentioning the average stay in the five star hotels in Macau that has in the past one year gone up from 1.45 days to 2.45 days. The longer the tourists stay at the casinos, chances are more that they spend more hours gambling, thereby boosting the revenue in the region.

However, on the stock market front, investors seem to be not quite buying Klatzkin’s ideas for the share sled 1% in trading the next day. May be the picture over a couple of months will give a good idea about what investors actually think of Macau’s casino scene.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Casinos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.