MGM Grand Cotai continues to miss opening deadlines, the latest obstacle being the government’s continued failure to issue a hotel license. “The licence application for the opening of the five-star hotel MGM Cotai and establishments inside the property is still
waiting for the favourable opinions from related technical departments,” said the Macao Government Tourism Office. Fire-safety and other related clearances are believed to be at the heart of the delay. Nomura Securities blamed a “governmental approval backlog, although we believe that most of it is a local management decision.” It thought MGM could have met its original, Jan. 29 deadline but only with “a herculean effort.” Nomura believes MGM will take hotel bookings for Chinese New Year (Feb. 16) which, in the understatement of the week, it called “an important revenue window no operator wants to miss.”
MGM can take consolation in the advance report of Desmond Lam, who got a sneak peek and deemed the megaresort “mesmerizing.” He wrote, “I truly believe this property is the way forward, in several dimensions, for Macao and its integrated resorts.” Lam’s early dispatch was short on specifics but he did observe that MGM “is attractive and posh, and has a unique identity. It is full of small details and embodies many aspects of Chinese culture as well as Macao historical and contemporary values. It mixes modern digital technology with intimate personal touches, metal with wood, young with old, and East with West. It blends Chinese collectivism with a light pinch of individualistic values—a multi-facet, high-tech and terminal-type complex with some emphasis on individualistic style and desire.” He concluded MGM Cotai should be the inspiration for other casino resorts of the future, including those in — ahem! — Japan. We agree in principle.
* Staying with MGM, it’s putting the destiny of its Level Up lounge at MGM Grand, designed for Millennials in the hands of a Millennial, 30-year-old Lovell Walker. If the 
games don’t catch your eye, the funkadelic aesthetic certainly will. At Level Up and elsewhere, reality is sinking in about skill-based slots. As Gamblit Gaming co-founder Eric Meyerhofer concedes, “This will take years to evolve.” Remember, SBS have only a small casino footprint: 500 of 982,000 gaming machines in North America. That’s a daunting stat. “People enjoy [SBS] better when they’re playing against people they don’t know,” says Meyerhofer. Go figure. So much for the received wisdom that Millennials want to play in groups with their friends. Still, says Meyerhofer, “I have no lack of confidence that this is going to work.”
* Las Vegas already has a celebrity robot: Mandarin Oriental‘s Pepper. While Pepper may take some of the question-and-answer strain off the concierge and front desks, other robots are not so benign. Room-service employees should be aware of service-oriented bots running up their backs, albeit at a stately 1.7 mph.
* Among the casualties of the Mandalay Bay shootings was the launch of the Lego Architecture Skylines version of Las Vegas, which prominently features in the mini-Strip. Instead of making the market in time for Christmas, a late-winter release is planned. Of course, the beauty of Lego is that if you don’t like the way the Las Vegas Strip looks, you can always re-do it yourself. The abbreviated Strip goes from the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign to the Stratosphere, with Wynncore in between. There’s no Caesars Palace, snubbed in favor of — get this — Luxor. Congrats, MGM Resorts International, better luck next time, Caesars Entertainment.
* Although there’s the usual last-minute scramble, Resorts World Catskills looks almost ready to go. A CBS affiliate has a bird’s-eye view of the progress.
* No surprise, Internet-gaming revenues in New Jersey are clobbering those in Delaware. The reason is simple: New Jersey has its eggs in many baskets while Delaware offers on i-poker, on the decline in both states.
