Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | February 2010 10 Entertainment’s integrated resort on Cotai, started a three-month campaign covering Chinese New Year and designed to bring new customers through its doors. The ‘Let’s Get Lucky’ campaign is the first of several events to be launched by City of Dreams in 2010. It includes the presentation of direct marketing material to passengers aboard Shun Tak’s TurboJET ferries from Hong Kong. Travellers are given a coupon in the shape of a‘LuckyWheel’and then invited to open the coupon along a perforated edge to reveal prize information. Rewards include instant cash prizes or a free spin on a lucky wheel machine at CoD. SJM Holdings, Dr Stanley Ho’s casino operating company, looks well placed to have a strong performance this Chinese New Year, as much because of the strategic position of its latest offering, Casino Oceanus, as any marketing effort. The property is rather ‘belt and braces’—it had a modest capex of HK$1.5 billion (US$190 million) and looks substantially like what it is; namely a gutted and converted shopping centre. Crucially, however, it is only a three- or four-minute walk from Macau Maritime FerryTerminal.When the property opened in mid-December, an SJM executive told Inside Asian Gaming that the strategy was precisely to grab visitors and hold on to them for three to four hours. Positioning Casino Oceanus is served by a bridge direct from the Maritime Terminal, thus conveniently funnelling customers away from the free shuttle buses of rival operators. IAG has been told that next year, an air- conditioned link complete with moving walkway may be built to make the journey even simpler and more comfortable during Macau’s hot and humid summers. Ponte 16, the gaming and hotel resort at Macau’s Inner Harbour near the historic old town, has also got in on the mass marketing act in time for Chinese New Year. Although not as naturally blessed in terms of strategic positioning as Casino Oceanus, Ponte 16 has managed to purchase at auction a sizeable collection of memorabilia once used as stage props by the late singer Michael Jackson. It includes a white glove covered in rhinestones worn by Mr Jackson in 1983 at Motown’s 25th anniversary TV special, where he sang‘Billie Jean’and performed his famous ‘Moonwalk’ for the first time. Ponte 16—half-owned by Dr Stanley Ho’s casino holding company, SJM—paid US$350,000 for the glove at a New York auction last year. That sounds like a lot of money, but if it draws in a new crowd to the property it will be considered cash very well spent. It could be that when the history of post-liberalisation Macau is written, the opening of Ponte 16’s ‘MJ Gallery’ on 1st February on the eve of the Year of the Tiger will be seen as a turning point. That turning point could prove to be the city’s transition from high roller fiefdom to all-year-round holiday haven in the manner of Las Vegas. Casino Oceanus Ponte 16 Cover Story