Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | June 2011 22 What would you like to see the other operators do to help extend the stay of visitors in Macau? I’d like them to bring in new products. We are not coming in with the intent of competing with the others with the same product. We are coming in here with a different positioning, different product, and hope that again our competitors in this industry would be able to see and learn from that as well. You seem to have accomplished a lot with the money you spent on this property. I can say with confidence we’ve spent our money well. Every dollar and cent that we spent makes an impact. A lot of people ask me, ‘how did you do this with this sum of money?’ Everybody is just overwhelmed by the kind of experience we’ve created, considering the money we invested. And at StarWorld we did the same thing. We spent only HK$3.4 billion (US$436 million), and created the casino with the third highest turnover in Macau. Dollar for dollar, we have been fighting above our weight at StarWorld. And I’m sure you will find the same thing happens here [at Galaxy Macau]—that we will probably be fighting above our weight in terms of dollars invested. Return on investment is something you always emphasise. How long do you think it will take to recoup your investment in this property? We’re confident that we will give our shareholders a very satisfactory return, as we did at StarWorld. At StarWorld, our return on capital I believe was in the seventies range. We have high hopes for this one, but it’s still early days for us to be able to predict how much margin we’re going to make. With this casino the key is we have put a lot of emphasis on the mass market, while StarWorld is more VIP-centric. So the return wearegoingtomakeherewebelieveisgoing to be substantially better than at StarWorld, simply because this is mass market driven [where margins are significantly higher]. Although Galaxy Macau is mass market focused, the VIP rooms and sections have been carefully planned and beautifully executed. Did you work closely with your VIP operations partners in coming up with the layout and positioning of the rooms? We are a learning corporation. We listen to everybody. We listen and see what our competitors are doing. And we talk to our customers, especially VIP operators, on a frequent basis to understand what they need. What kinds of entertainment do you plan to bring to Galaxy Macau? In the long term, we would like to do bigger things in entertainment. But I want to start a little bit smaller and experiment, leading to bigger things. Because we still need to explore what types of entertainment will appeal to Asians. What works in the Different positioning—the casino at Galaxy Macau High spirits—Galaxy Macau boasts the world’s first Macallan Bar