Melco targeting premium mass, “pushing differentiation”
Morpheus, the newest hotel from Melco Resorts & Entertainment, will open on June 15, said Melco Chairman and CEO Lawrence Ho in a press conference last week.
Notable for its avant-garde design by the late architect Zaha Hadid, the property has been in the works for 10 years, reported the Macau News Agency.
Speaking at G2E Asia, Ho said the resort has a Japanese theme epitomized by Japanese fine dining, decor and entertainment.
The property will become a “landmark for Macau, an icon for Asia,” Ho predicted. He added that Melco’s Hollywood-themed Studio City resort will be add cutting-edge, tech-oriented attractions to draw premium mass customers. Those attractions include a new virtual-reality zone, “an adventure land in technology,” Ho said.
At Melco’s City of Dreams, the company plans a pop-up retail concept, Ho added. “For the first time ever we will be creating our own shopping environment that we will be running ourselves as a pop-up, inviting the coolest brands in the world into a 1,500 square meter space, a wholly different concept.” Ho said his goal is to “push differentiation.” He also announced a new hotel brand to be called Libertine, which he said would be “super funky and sexy.”
Meanwhile, he said City of Dreams closed its poker room because it was “never profitable.”
“This market never did well,” Ho told MNA. The poker room, which opened in 2013, closed earlier this month, after Chinese authorities banned online poker on the mainland.
“At the end of the day, the poker room was taking up gaming tables and taking up space,” Ho said. “In line with our philosophy, we are always trying new stuff—we are opening an eSports stadium at Studio City, hopefully before the end of the year.”
