{"id":20320,"date":"2017-10-11T07:23:08","date_gmt":"2017-10-11T15:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=20320"},"modified":"2017-10-11T07:23:48","modified_gmt":"2017-10-11T15:23:48","slug":"adverse-golden-week-in-macao-ho-caesars-jockey-for-position-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/adverse-golden-week-in-macao-ho-caesars-jockey-for-position-in-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"Adverse Golden Week in Macao; Ho, Caesars jockey for position in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Golden Week is an important holiday for Macao<\/strong> casinos and it failed to deliver this year. Visitor traffic was down 1%, causing \"\"stocks of both Sands China<\/strong> and Galaxy Entertainment Group<\/strong> to be punished<\/a> on Hong Kong<\/strong>‘s Hang Seng Index<\/strong>. It was, said IGamiX<\/strong> Managing Director Ben Lee<\/strong>, “just like a regular Saturday night performance, definitely not a \u2018Golden Week\u2019-type busy.\u201d Contrarily,\u00a0Sanford C. Bernstein & Co<\/strong>. analyst Vitaly Umansky<\/strong> argued that a longer-than-usual Golden Week dissipated daily business. Either way, Melco Resorts & Entertainment<\/strong> CEO Lawrence Ho<\/strong> pronounced himself “happy” with the numbers so far.<\/p>\n

For his part, Ho is more focused<\/a> on Japan<\/strong> at present, saying,\u00a0\u201cThere is a lot of potential in the market.\u201d At the same time, Ho acknowledged that tourism to Japan (20 million people last year) is half the volume to Hong Kong. That being said, it will behoove \"\"Ho and other casino aspirants to persuade Shinzo Abe<\/strong>‘s government not to bar Japanese citizens from casinos, let alone make them pay for the privilege of playing in them. Ho hinted that a Japanese megaresort could be his crowning achievement, saying,\u00a0\u201cIn our industry, there are so many legends. Like my father, Sheldon Adelson<\/strong> and Steve Wynn<\/strong>, they all created something.\u201d In a startling revelation, Ho said, “We had many opportunities go into Las Vegas<\/strong>, But every time, we shied away from that …\u00a0the greatest development opportunities for years to come will be in Asia<\/strong>.\u201d The latter’s gain is Vegas’ loss.<\/p>\n

As for Abe’s loss of parliamentary clout in a July 5 snap election, Caesars Entertainment<\/strong> President of International Development Steven Tight<\/strong> said,\u00a0\u201cMy understanding is they are still on track for the passage of the implementation bill by the end of this year.\u201d Between not having an eligible site<\/a> and being laser-focused on the 2020 Olympics, Tokyo<\/strong> is no longer seen as being in the running for one of the (probable) two integrated\u00a0resorts. Also, Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike<\/strong> is only moderately interested in a casino push.<\/p>\n

Said Tight,\u00a0\u201cTokyo is going to have to decide whether it wants to be involved in this initiative in the first phase or not.\u201d Also, to \"\"win over a recalcitrant Japanese public, Caesars is working on a film of a day in the life of a megaresort, with which it will bombard Nipponese airwaves and other venues. Predicted Tight “it will be probably one of the most stringent regulatory environments in the world. And I think that\u2019s what\u2019s required for [the Japanese]\u00a0to feel comfortable moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Caesars’ South Korea<\/strong> project, it has only missed a step or two as the company has had to replace ex-partner Lippo Group<\/strong>.\u00a0\u201cThey have done some initial site work and some additional soil investigation, which requires a bit of remediation. The site fencing is going up, and we are starting major site works probably in late July, early August. The current targeted
\ncompletion date is mid-2020,\u201d Tight said of the $800 million casino. Assuming the Korean peninsula hasn’t been nuked into oblivion by then, “we are optimistic that everything will be resolved, and that tourism will continue to be growing in Korea, especially from China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Caesars plans a two-track marketing plan to synergize Japanese and Korean casinos. Since South Koreans won’t be able to gamble at Incheon<\/strong>, Caesars plans to use the allure of its non-gaming amenities to entice them to Japan, where they can wager. Also, Total Rewards<\/strong> will be extended overseas to “move them around from resort to resort.\u201d Although we’d rank Caesars as a dark-horse candidate for Japan at this point, we wouldn’t say they haven’t got this thing well thought out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Golden Week is an important holiday for Macao casinos and it failed to deliver this year. Visitor traffic was down 1%, causing stocks of both Sands China and Galaxy Entertainment Group to be punished on Hong Kong‘s Hang Seng Index. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26,201,7,171,94,62,53,12,61,32,19,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20320"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20322,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20320\/revisions\/20322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}