Dream World

What visitors can expect from CoD

CoD President Greg Hawkins told Inside Asian Gaming that the first phase of CoD is due to open in mid-June. But days later the company announced that was being brought forward a fortnight to 1st June.

That initial phase features the business heart of the resort: the main gaming floor; the VIP gaming areas; the Hard Rock Casino and its accompanying hotel; the Crown Towers hotel; The Boulevard (a shopping zone); restaurants and The Bubble, a futuristic pod-like structure offering an animated light and sound show called Dragon’s Treasure. Asia’s first Hard Rock Hotel and Casino combo comes complete with a starter pack of rock star memorabilia donated by local Cantopop legend Jacky Cheung.

Slot mix

The gaming facilities will offer a total of 520 gaming tables and around 1,350 gaming machines. On casual inspection of the main gaming floor, Aristocrat appears to have the lion’s share of the slot market at City of Dreams, including the ever-popular Cash Express and Fa Fa Fa Hyperlink games.

Bally Technologies Inc confirmed to IAG that it is providing just under 25% of the machines in the property, including Hot Shot Progressive units. IAG also spotted a bank of Atronic’s very successful two-level progressive DEAL OR NO DEAL™–THE EXPERIENCE based on the popular television game show produced by Endemol.

Mr Hawkins said the main floor will have some entry-level tables with minimum bets of HK$200. Given the mathematics of running a baccarat table in Macau (only locals can be employed as dealers and they tend to be paid more than migrant workers), that entry price is pretty much standard.

Judgement

The early performance of CoD will go some way to answering whether Galaxy Entertainment Group made the right call by effectively mothballing its own Cotai project next door. MPEL will certainly be hoping that Galaxy resumes work sooner rather than later, given that many of the first guests at Crown Towers and the Hard Rock Hotel Macau will have a view of Galaxy’s building site.

The importance that MPEL management places on building the company’s VIP gambing business is revealed by the decision to concentrate in phase one on opening the upmarket hotel accommodation. This consists of the 300-room Crown Towers including 55 suites and 33 ‘villas’ (they are in effect super sized suites on the uppermost floors); and the 300-room Hard Rock Hotel with 70 suites (including two branded ‘Rock Star Suites’) and an accompanying Hard Rock Casino. The more middle market Grand Hyatt Macau offering the balance of the resort’s 2,200 hotel rooms, won’t be opening until phase two, due before the end of this year.

An obvious question is where this additional VIP capacity on Cotai leaves Crown Macau, MPEL’s overwhelmingly VIP-focused property at nearby Taipa. That was answered in part when MPEL announced in late April that Crown Macau was being rebranded as ‘Altira Macau’, under the leadership of Ted Chan. Mr Chan’s recent professional career highlights the often symbiotic relationship between casino operators and junket agents in Macau. Mr Chan is a former CEO of Mocha Clubs, MPEL’s slot club unit aimed at local Macau players, He left MPEL in 2007 to take up the CEO job at Amax, the Hong Kong-listed junket aggregator, shortly before it started feeding high rollers to Crown Macau in the fourth quarter of 2007. He then moved back to MPEL in November 2008 as CEO of Crown Macau.

Crown Macau, a.k.a. Altira Macau, has proven itself a very successful player in the high roller market. It had a shaky start in May 2007 when it opened seven months late and massively over budget (with a final US$583 million price tag versus an originally budgeted US$192 million). Since then Crown/Altira Macau has managed to grab a significant slice of VIP gross gaming revenue in Macau. This was thanks to its market-storming 1.35% rolling chip commission offer to Amax. Amax duly obliged by sending lots of business to the then Crown Macau, allowing the property to grab a near 20% share of the VIP market by the first quarter of 2008. Amax claimed last month that rolling chip volume generated in the fiscal 2009 twelve-month period ended 31st March 2009 totalled approximately HK$341.6 billion. It said this was a market leading level of VIP gaming volume at a single casino in Macau for the relevant period.