Inside Asian Gaming

29 The Marina Bay Sands will have around 1.2 million square feet of convention and ex- hibition space, giving Singapore the largest installed base of expo space in the region. In addition, LVS is set to unveil 1.2 million square feet of expo space at its Venetian Macau casino resort on August 28, and has already announced plans to raise its expo space in Macau to 2.4 million square feet.This will give the company a dominant position in the burgeoning Asian MICE sector. The Marina Bay Sands will also feature 2,500 hotel rooms, a 1 million-square-foot re- tail mall, and a 200,000-square-foot arts and sciences museum. With these plans in hand, LVS broke ground on the property in February, and immediately ran into some well-publicized problems. To start, the groundbreaking itself had been delayed for about three months in order to clear embedded rocks found at the site. Then soon after the project’s construc- tion start, Indonesia imposed a ban on sand exports,pushing up the cost of importing the vital construction material—a major compo- nent of concrete—by 15 to 30 percent. Despite the additional cost and time delays, LVS President and COO William Weidner said the Marina Bay Sands will be completed by the original target of 2009. LVS Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson said the greater cost of importing sand would not affect the project’s US$3.6 billion budget, because “we always include a 5 to 10 percent increase in the budget as con- tingency for unforeseen events.” Still, by the time it opens in 2009, Marina Bay Sands will likely become the most ex- pensive casino resort ever developed. Island hopping Despite fielding a proposal that some criticized as “uninspired,” Genting Interna- tional was the odds-on favorite to win the bid for the second IR, to be located on a 49- hectare waterfront site on the island of Sen- tosa—which means “peace and tranquility” in Malay.The island is connected to the main- land by a 710-meter causeway. In December 2006, Genting did indeed emerge as the license winner by meeting the government’s criteria for the site — namely, tourism appeal, design, level of investment and strength of the bidding consortium and partners. Genting provided “the most compelling proposal overall that best meets our eco- nomic and tourism objectives,” said Deputy Prime Minister S.Jayakumar.“In particular,the The theme park at Genting’s Resorts World at Sentosa will feature 22 attractions, with 15 designed specifically for Singapore, along with an animation studio. The theme park will take up roughly half of the site. The resort will have 1,830 rooms in six hotels and the world’s largest marine park, spanning 20 acres and including a whale shark lagoon.