I’ll get some interesting Google hits from that headline, I’m sure. In any event, Stanley Ho has opened his new casino, the Grand Lisboa. It’s next to his old flagship, the Casino Lisboa, and is dressed to impress. From the Washington Post:
Thousands of gamblers on Sunday jammed into a new casino owned by a local billionaire who is trying to fend off an invasion by Las Vegas tycoons who have been gobbling up market share in the booming Chinese territory of Macau.
Many of the punters who crowded into the Grand Lisboa _ shaped like a huge lotus flower covered in blinking lights _ were big-betting mainland Chinese who helped push Macau past the Las Vegas Strip last year as the world’s gaming center.
The five-floor casino is owned by Hong Kong billionaire Stanley Ho, who held a monopoly on gaming in Macau for four decades until 2002. The former Portuguese enclave _ two islands and a peninsula off China’s southeastern coast _ is the only place in China where casinos are legal.
In the past four years, some of the biggest names from Las Vegas _ Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s Sheldon Adelson, Wynn Resorts Ltd.’s Stephen Wynn and MGM Mirage Inc. _ have been aggressively building casinos, luxury hotels and mega resorts in Macau.
Before he opened the 3 billion Hong Kong dollar ($384 million) Grand Lisboa on Sunday, the 85-year-old Ho acknowledged that his market share slipped to 63 percent last year, and analysts widely agree that it will erode further. But Ho, who has 17 casinos in Macau, said his new flagship Grand Lisboa would compete well with the Las Vegas-style casinos because of his long experience in the market.
“We are the leaders, not the followers,” he said. “We know the city well.”
Ho is battling a common perception that his casinos are stodgy, smoky and plagued with surly service.
His new five-floor casino was decorated with plush red carpet and silver light fixtures with strands of crystal beads. The gaming floors have 240 tables and 484 slot machines.
The 52-story building _ with a 430-room hotel that opens later this year _ has a round base that looks like a giant Faberge egg covered in lights the flash red, green and gold. The design of its tower was inspired by the long plumes of a Brazilian showgirl’s headdress. The lobby is decorated with 580,000 Swarovski crystals, gold plated leaves and crystal balls.
Tycoon Stanley Ho Opens Casino in Macau – washingtonpost.com
Later in the article, the reporter claims that the Venetian Macau will be the world’s largest hotel-casino. At 3000 rooms, it’d be squarely in the middle of the pack on the Strip, so this must be a reference to the number of gaming tables. I should probably keep a page on the UNLV website with the top ten casino resorts in the world by room count, gaming positions, square footage, gross revenue, and whatever other metrics they use. But, time being limited, I don’t…yet. If I were to keep a list, I’d have to make distinctions that the casino operators–or the PR people–might not like. For example, will Venetian/Palazzo be considered a single “integrated complex?” If so, it would be the world’s biggest by room count, but, by that logic, should Mirage/TI or, for that matter, Excalibur/Luxor/Mandalay Bay be considered “integrated complexes?” I don’t know, but I’d have to decide if I wanted to make the list authorative.
Also interesting that, even as Dr. Ho’s market share is slipping (“only” 63%), the pie is getting bigger, and since real estate is booming and he owns much of Macau, he’s got to be getting richer.
As far as the casino itself goes, it’s got about 3 times the tables of your typical Strip joint but one-fifth the slots, if you need a reference point.