China’s Chimelong Group expects to have a hotel, a circus and an expansive theme park up and running for visitors to Macau’s neighboring Hengqin Island in time for the Lunar New Year celebrations next month.
Hengqin Bay Hotel, the largest in China with 1,888 rooms, is slated to open Jan. 18. The adjoining theme park, called Ocean Kingdom, will open at the end of January, adding its attractions to regular performances of the resort’s Circus Town, which debuted in November.
Two more hotels of 2,000 and 500 rooms, with additional entertainment facilities, are also planned, amounting to a total investment estimated at RMB5 billion, or about US$833 million.
Macau can use every yuan of it too. With only 28,000 hotel rooms to accommodate an average of 77,000 daily visitors, the booming casino enclave is running out of space, which means gamblers without a place to stay must return to the mainland before the border checkpoints close at night. This curtails the amount of time and money they spend.
Gambling revenue grew more than 18 percent last year, and the expansion under way on the Cotai Strip should help support this growth, but all its developable land is spoken for. Hengqin offers about 28 square kilometers of land available for building.
