South Korean casino operator Paradise Group has broken ground on its planned US.7 billion Paradise City casino resort near the country’s main international airport at Incheon.
Plans for the project, located within a government-sponsored special economic zone on Yeongjong Island about 30 kilometers from the capital Seoul, call for a 2017 opening.
Paradise is partnering with Japanese pachinko giant Sega Sammy Holdings on the development, includes a 750-room hotel, shopping and dining and other attractions and a foreigners-only casino with approximately 160 table games and 340 slot machines.
“Above all, the resort complex boasts of a geographical advantage in that it is located within walking distance from Incheon International Airport,” Paradise Sega Sammy Chief Executive Choi Jong-hwan told the Korea Herald.
Choi has said in recent interviews that the casino would establish a massive junket operator network to bring in high rollers from Mainland China.
South Korea is home to 16 casinos restricted to foreign passport holders and one in the remote northeast of the country that is open to domestic players. Under current law all the new developments would be foreigners-only.
Standard Chartered Equity Research in Hong Kong said in a recent report that the South Korean government would like China to be contributing half of the projected 20 million inbound tourists the country seeks to attract annually by 2017, versus 4 million out of 12 million total tourists China contributed in 2013.
Yeongjong Island has attracted investment interest from several international casino brands—including U.S.-based Caesars Entertainment, Genting Singapore and Genting Hong Kong—and Hong Kong-based conglomerate Chow Tai Fook Enterprises.
Caesars plans to develop a US$2 billion resort complex in phases at Yeongjong beginning in 2018. The first phase calls for an $800 million, 500-room hotel, 100 table games and 150 machine games, a shopping mall, a stand-alone convention center and dining and entertainment facilities.
Chow Tai Fook, whose holdings include property development subsidiaries and the world’s largest jewelry retailer, is eyeing a resort at Yeongjong pegged at $1.6 billion.
The country’s popular tourist island of Jeju, currently home to eight foreigners-only casinos, two of them owned by Paradise, is also attracting interest, notably from Genting Singapore, operator of Singapore’s Resorts World Sentosa, and Genting Hong Kong, a partner in the Philippines’ Resorts World Manila casino and hotel complex.
The two subsidiaries of the Genting Group, both separately listed and publicly traded, are partnering with China property developer Landing International on separate projects. Genting HK plans to open a small casino early next year at the Hyatt Regency Jeju. Genting Singapore has a more expansive project in mind, which it wants to open in phases beginning in 2017 as part of a complex priced at US$2.2 billion at full build-out.
