A soft opening is set for October 8 for the first legal resort casino in Russia’s Far East.
Tigre de Cristal Casino & Resort, a joint venture under construction near Vladivostok, whose partners include Macau gaming magnate Lawrence Ho, will offer 121 hotel rooms in its US$200 million first phase and two restaurants, a spa and a casino targeting the north China, Korea and Japan markets.
G1 Entertainment, as the consortium is known, plans to launch construction of a phase two next year that will include 300 more rooms, a theater and sports facilities.
The Vladivostok region is one of four special “zones” where casinos are permitted under a 2009 law that banished Russia’s thriving industry from Moscow, St. Petersburg and other major cities.
It is also the zone that has attracted the most actual and prospective investment to date, largely because of its proximity to a vast underserved market in northern China. Observers see the possibility of at least three more venues opening in the next several years, one of them backed by Cambodia’s Hong Kong-listed NagaCorp.
