Inside Asian Gaming

January 2008 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 21 ceilings and a loud open-market like gam- ing hall— something which Las Vegas Sands Corp have replicated at the Venetian. Wynn attracts the better-heeled main hall players with its more elegant yet mut- ed interior design, and its ground floor café, despite the atrocious service (from many, many visits), is still the preferred meeting place for most international visitors as it is the most convenient in terms of access (no other property appears to have factored in a lobby café which is of decent internation- al standard). Crown, with its sophisticated chic, has been rated by most competing gaming man- agers as very ‘cool’, but then again those rival managers are not exactly the desired custom- ers. The subdued lighting, the dark brooding elevators plus ultra-chic restaurants have at- tracted mainly corporate clientele, but does not appear to have succeeded too well with the players. They are the only ones to have tried local mail-drops, matchplays and free slot credits, and heavy standalone promotion of their restaurants—all tried and true mass market tools oft used in Crown’s Melbourne hometown, except the target mix here in Macau is not quite the same. Then again, the little old ladies who used to perform their dai- ly arbitrage weren’t complaining.They would jump on the bus from the Border, go into Crown in pairs, get their HK$50 matchplay, “Sands also set new standards for high ceilings and a loud open-market like gaming hall—something which Las Vegas Sands Corp have replicated at the Venetian”