Inside Asian Gaming

November 2013 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 13 COVER STORY be home to a lot more than 7,000 people.The goal is 280,000 by 2020. Home prices have already started to climb in anticipation. The sole units currently available commercially, 1,800 of them in a residential tower set to open near the Lotus Bridge checkpoint, have drawn huge demand from Macau residents and are considered a bellwether for what the market will bear. They’re expected to fetch RMB25,000-30,000 per square meter (HK$31,800-$38,150) in the early going, a 60% premium to the going rate in Zhuhai’s central business district of Xiangzhou. This also is likely to affect Macau’s dominant industry in a profound way. “You’ve got a dynamic where over some period of time you’ll have many hundreds of thousands of people living there,” notes Mr Govertsen. “So it’s almost a bedroom community for Macau, but most likely mainland Chinese residents, and I liken that almost to the locals casino dynamic in Las Vegas where you’ve got 2 million people living there who collectively have a much lower propensity togamble but still generate in the neighborhood of $3 billion US a year in gaming revenue at locals casinos. Clearly, that could be meaningful as a mass-market revenue source.” A ‘Bigger and Bigger Experience’ Viewed from the Macau side of the Lotus Bridge, Hengqin looks like something from