Inside Asian Gaming

Oct 2007 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 9 Cover Story in Macau with no baggage. We don’t want to imitate anybody. We don’t copy what Ve- gas operators have been doing. We feel that Macau has an Asian culture, a Chinese cul- ture, so we are going to find our own path.” Still, Mr Lui admits that although “we don’t want to copy anything from Vegas, we do learn a lot from them. Learn from them and apply it in a way that would ap- peal to locals.” Looking back on the boom Macau’s visitor arrival boom from 2004 is often attributed to the opening of the first foreign-operated casinos in the city following the end of Stanley Ho’s 42-year casino-operating monopoly. Sands Macao opened in May of that year, followed by the Galaxy-run Waldo in July. At least equally as important, however, has been the successive easing of travel restrictions on mainland Chi- nese travellers wishing to visit Hong Kong and Macau from the second half of 2003. In the wake of the Macau visitor boom, several operators quickly opened casinos in the city—in some cases converting dis- used commercial and residential buildings into gaming properties. Even unattractive older properties were packed as capacity struggled to keep up with demand. Galaxy tapped into the surging demand with its city clubs, though Mr Lui stresses “the city clubs strategy was not just about grabbing mon- ey.We wanted to establish connections with the VIP room operators before anybody else, so we would be able to pick and choose the ones we felt comfortable with, so that they would come in here [StarWorld] when we had space for them. It was about establish- ing relationships. If I know you first, of course I’m going to come back to you, and because of that relationship you will probably listen to me more.” No backtracking “We learned a lot from those three years of establishing contacts,” continues Mr Lui. Those relationships were cemented by GEG’s strict adherence to a consistent business strategy. All other new operators arriving in Macau appear to have back- tracked on their initial strategies in some way or other. Although Sands and Wynn now rely heavily on junket operators to Jinmen Premium Club