Inside Asian Gaming

12 unique.Itwill bebetween the [Cotai Strip’s] po- dium and the four towers. It’s a huge amount of space and will be beautifully landscaped.” Still relatively short stay Although Mr Adelson believes the Cotai Strip will move Macau away from the day-trip market, Mr Bridle anticipates the average stay in the Cotai Strip’s Shangri-La hotel will be shorter than the average guest stay across hotels in the group. “[In Cotai] You may be on a one point something day stay, whereas across the Shangri-La group it’s probably 2.3 to 2.5 days,” says Mr Bridle. Since the Cotai Strip will be a resort rath- er than purely a business or conference des- tination like Wanchai in Hong Kong, the ho- tel operator will have opportunities to build guest revenues in other areas, he claims. “We [Shangri-La, Macau] are going to have a 2,000 sq. meter spa, and we think a lot of people that are coming [to the Cotai Strip], whether attending a convention, exhibition or meeting, show or shopping, will have a bit more free time to fit in. We think things like the spa will be where we might regain that revenue we might have lost.” The spa, under the group’s CHI brand, will feature individual treatment suites, offering Chinese and Himalayan therapies. Mr Bridle says Shangri-La, Macau, will be “different” from the Hong Kong property “but will still have a Shangri-La feel”. “We’ll be looking to provide a quality environment, rather than a gimmicky approach,”he says. Mr Bridle says room prices for both prop- erties have still to be decided. “We will put in a general manager in the summer, with a marketing director, and that’s when we’ll start to look at the pricing. Obviously we see a price differential between the Shangri-La and the Traders, but we haven’t yet decided where we’re going to pitch the prices. Bear in mind in today’s market we don’t really set a pure rack rate any more. Hotels today tend to be on a more floating rate basis.” Convention engine Mr Fry at Starwood says he expects upward pressure on room rates. “If you look at the whole of Macau, Las Vegas Sands is going to control a huge part of the room inventory. There will be significant pressures to keep prices at probably the highest level possible. “I think the other benefit that LVS has is that it will control the convention centre, and that’s the engine that’s going to drive most of Macau, so they’re going to be able to take those guests and put them into our hotels. I think we’re going to benefit from that. There’ll hopefully be so much business at the convention centre that they fill all of Las Vegas Sands’ hotels and then business will trickle off to the other hotels.” Margie Logarta, editor of the influential magazine Business Traveller Asia-Pacific , ex- pects service standards in the Cotai Strip ho- tels to be just as high as their sister properties in Hong Kong.“I don’t think it’s in the interests of any hotelier not to make their rooms and service commensurate with what’s available in Hong Kong or Las Vegas or New York, and they will charge rates to match.” Starwood says it has three key words to convey the experience of staying in one of its Sheraton hotels: “warmth; comfort and connection.” Mr Fry says “that philosophy is inter- twined with the whole design process – in the rooms, in the public spaces and in the service delivery. It’s a challenging thing to achieve, but I think Starwood as a hotel com- pany is much more advanced in creating dif- ferent branded experiences than any of our competitors.” Ms Logarta says that while people from the region will inevitably make comparisons between Cotai’s new hotels and what’s on of- fer inHong Kong,in the future the benchmark will be Las Vegas.“What’s important now is to raise the profile of Macau to equal if not sur- pass that of Las Vegas in terms of products and services and image. It’s all about saving people a long plane trip by bringing Las Ve- gas to China. The message to the Chinese consumers is: ‘Go to Las Vegas if you must, but hey, we’re good enough here.’” “Asia’s really lucky because the Las Vegas people are pouring in all the goods they can, knowing they will get their money back and some more at that,”concludes Ms Logarta. Jackpot Feature: Outback Jack selectable Card Feature can be won at random during any bought game. 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