With Macau’s casino industry battling headwinds stronger than any in its history, Sands China opened The Londoner last week with confidence that its newest themed entry to the market will pay off.
The first phase of the remodeled and reimagined resort, grafted onto the three-hotel complex that first opened in the spring of 2012 as Sands Cotai Central, was unveiled to the public on February 8, three days before the start of what is expected to be an unusually quiet Lunar New Year holiday.
Normally it’s the busiest travel season in China and a massively lucrative time for Macau’s casinos. But the pandemic has changed all that. Stay-at-home advisories have been issued across the country, and the Macau government, for its part, has effectively closed off visitation from Hong Kong and has imposed mandatory quarantines on visitors from more than a dozen mainland cities. A traditionally crowded lineup of public celebrations tied to the weeklong Spring Festival, as the New Year is known, has been canceled as well.
“Chinese New Year is always Chinese New Year. We are hopeful,” Sands China President Wilfred Wong told reporters who turned out for the grand opening. “Obviously there are suggestions that the visitors might not be as good as we expect, but I think it may give us a lot of surprises.”
He acknowledged that “Some mainland tourists will avoid travelling during the Spring Festival. But they may set off trips following the festival. We believe the occupancy data will come to some highs after the Chinese New Year.”
The Londoner, priced at US$1.9 billion at full build-out, looks to trade on Sands China’s previous successes in the Cotai resort district—The Venetian Macau and The Parisian Macao—which similarly trade on the exotica of Western culture for Chinese audiences.
Wong noted that each of the resorts enjoys its own positioning in the market, The Parisian as “affordable luxury,” as he put it, The Londoner as “luxury.”
“I think there’s enough tourists to justify some luxury travel,” he said. “And we are offering a very luxurious environment for visitors.”
The Londoner’s exterior is designed to look like the Palace of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament, a scaled-down replica of Big Ben included, and an array of attractions ultimately will be featured, including costumed characters, street shows, virtual reality experiences, themed food and beverage outlets and other well-known attractions associated with the British capital.
The complex will open in stages and eventually will encompass four hotels totaling some 6,000 rooms, suites and residences, a casino with up to 450 table games and 2,000 machine games, a 6,000-seat arena, a remodeled shopping mall and more than 34,000 square meters of meetings and exhibitions space.
The opening was officiated by Macau’s first chief executive, Edmund Ho, now vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and attended by Lei Wai Nong, Macau’s secretary for Economy and Finance, Director of the Macao Government Tourism Office Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes and Adriano Marques Ho, director of the government casino regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
Yan Zhi Chan, deputy director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in Macau also was on hand along with Wang Dong of the Office of the Commissioner of the Foreign Ministry of the People’s Republic of China.
The 65-member Macau Youth Orchestra performed. The Sands China Choir sang. David Beckham also put in an appearance, virtually. The retired British football star has lent his name to a portion of the 600 suites that debuted last week as The Londoner Hotel, whose attractions include an ornate Victorian-style lobby, the Crystal Palace, topped by a 33-meter-high stained-glass ceiling.
A second all-suite hotel, Londoner Court, also was unveiled, along with the aforementioned retail mall, Shoppes at Londoner, and the Londoner Arena.
The ceremony also featured a video that paid tribute to Sheldon Adelson, the late chairman and CEO of Sands China and parent company Las Vegas Sands. Adelson passed away January 12 at the age of 87 after a long battle with cancer.
