Mar

30

Crown Macau: the new VIP king

Filed Under Cotai, Taipa, Crown Macau | 1 Comment

Congratulations to the Crown Macau on its dramatic turnaround.  The six-star hotel casino continues to gain market share, particularily in the high-end VIP segment.  One Wall Street gaming analyst recently wrote:

“Thanks to A-Max’s junkets, Melco PBL’s market share improved substantially from 5.7 per cent in November to 18.1 per cent in February, making Crown Macau the busiest casino in the world in terms of betting volume,” Credit Suisse’s Hong Kong-based gambling analyst, Gabriel Chan, says in a bullish new report on the company.

“If we focus on market share in the high-roller segment alone, the improvement was even more astonishing with market share increasing from 6.6 per cent in November to 24.8 per cent in February.” 

That’s Read more

Mar

1

Crown Macau on a roll

Filed Under Macau, Macao, Cotai, Melco PBL, Crown Macau | Leave a Comment

Lord knows MPEL’s Crown Macau had its troubles last year, so I wanted to make sure everyone saw how successful its revamped VIP strategy has been.  This news is a few weeks old, but like I said, they deserve their time in the spotlight

From Macau Daily Times:

Crown Macau’s VIP share of the gaming market has soared to 18 percent this month thanks largely to a new junket deal introduced last December, developer Melco PBL Entertainment (MPEL) reported yesterday. Read more

Dec

30

New Crown Macau video

Filed Under Taipa, Crown Macau | Leave a Comment

3 1/2 minutes long.  I think its worth checking out.

Aug

16

Crown Macao struggles

Filed Under Macau, Macao, Cotai, Melco PBL, Crown Macau | Leave a Comment

“A six-star hotel in a three-star location”

This story paints a pretty bleak picture of the Crown Macao. It’s worth pointing out that that the writer’s casino review is from June, but from the tone of the story, it doesnt sound like much will change in about a month and half.

“The world’s biggest casino, the Sands Macau, was chock-a-block, with some 2000 people spread across four floors.

Ten minutes away on Taipa Island at Packer’s Crown Macau, it’s a very different story. There is hardly anyone playing. There are roughly 140 tables spread over five floors in the non-VIP area and maybe 150 customers all up.

The punters are easily outnumbered by dealers, waiters and other staff. The top floor is almost deserted.

The entire room has only one of its 30 tables in operation, with five people gathered around. Another roped-off section has, perhaps, a further dozen tables of which just two or three are in play. It’s always like this, the barman tells me.

The poker machines are no busier. There are supposed to be 479 in Crown Macau - I don’t bother to count them - but, that afternoon, at least 90 per cent appear to be idle.”

Comparing this to the Cotai Strip®’s Venetian Macao and other Cotai Strip® hotel casinos is like comparing apples to oranges, so I wouldnt be overly concerned.

Jul

19

Crown Macau fully opens

Filed Under Cotai, Melco PBL, Crown Macau | Leave a Comment

Hallelujah!

Melco PBL announced that its Crown Macau hotel and casino on Taipa Island is now completely open. This has been a long time in the making, and am glad they were able to pull it in July.

Next big announcement will be the Venetian Macao on the Cotai Strip® in late August. Let’s hope they have a better opening than the Crown did.

Crown Macau Hotel Casino

Jul

3

Cotai Strip® pictures of hotels and casinos

Filed Under Macau, Macao, Cotai, Venetian Macao, Crown Macau, Hengqin Island, Wynn Macau, City of Dreams, Grand Waldo Hotel, MGM Grand Macau, Grand Lisboa, Hotel Lisboa | Leave a Comment

Here are some pictures of the Cotai Strip® hotels and casinos that i’ve gathered from a few places on the web. Sorry for how messy and disorganized this looks - I did my best!

I believe many of my readers have never actually been to Macau, or havent been there in along time, so I hope this helps. I will try to do this more often, so if you have any pictures of Cotai or Macau hotels and casinos that you would like to share, please send them to me ateditor@cotaicasinonews.com. Next time I will have hopefully figured out a better way to post pictures.

Cotai Strip® June ‘07 from

Cotai Strip Source: flickr.com/photos/elusivek/

Venetian Macao

Venetian Macao Cotai StripVenetian Macau Both June 07 | Source: MacauCasinoWorld.com

Venetian CotaiVenetian Macao

Venetian Cotai StripJune, May, May | Source: flickr.com/photos/cindyshinkansen/

AND STEPPING AWAY FROM LAS VEGAS SANDS’ COTAI STRIP®, WE HAVE THE REST OF COTAI: 

Grand Waldo Hotel on Cotai June ‘07

Grand Waldo Source: MacauCasinoWorld.com

Grand Waldo Hotel Macao Source: flickr.com/photos/nancy_ho/

Crown Macau

Crown MacauCrown Macao April, May | Source: flickr.com/photos/cindyshinkansen/

City of Dreams May ‘07

Macau City of Dreams Source: flickr.com/photos/cindyshinkansen/

Hengqin and Cotai

Cotai Hengqin

Miscellaneous

Macau Shuttles Free casino shuttles from border crossing | Source:MacauCasinoWorld.com

Macau casinos MGM Macau June ‘07 Grand Lisboa, Hotel Lisboa, Wynn Macau and MGM Grand Macau; MGM Grand Macao | flickr.com/photos/cindyshinkansen/

grand-lisboa.jpgGrand Lisboa June ‘07 Grand Lisboa, Grand Lisboa and Hotel Lisboa | MacauCasinoWorld.com

Thank you to everyone for giving me permission to use your pictures!

Jul

2

Cotai Strip®, Macau, and Vegas room rates

Filed Under Macau, Macao, Cotai, Venetian Macao, Crown Macau, Wynn Macau, Galaxy Starworld, Sands Macao | 2 Comments

I thought it would be interesting to compare hotel room rates across some of the different casinos and hotels in Vegas, Macau and the Cotai Strip®. I used a Tues night and a Saturday night in October. No hotel room rate is listed for the Crown Macau and Starworld because every Friday and Saturday night is reserved (I guess for VIPs). All rates are in USD.

  • Hotels, Sat Night, Tues Night
  • Venetian Las Vegas $579, 379
  • Venetian Macao $306, 190
  • Wynn Las Vegas $599, $239
  • Wynn Macau $344, $216
  • Hotel Lisboa $173, $109
  • Crown Macau Unavail, $561
  • Starworld, Unavail, $194

Jun

17

Crown Macau Hotel update

Filed Under Macao, Cotai, Melco PBL, Crown Macau | Leave a Comment

(2 of 3 postings today)

Almost there.

Crown Macau CasinoMelco PBL announced that the Crown Macau casino has opened 60 hotel rooms to the public and is on track to open the remaining hotel rooms by the end of July 2007.Regarding the casino space, Crown Macau said, “…management has confirmed thatapproximately 70% of the VIP and all of the premium mass gaming facilities are now completed at the property. Five of the six restaurants at Crown Macau are currently in operation. ”

When complete, the 36 storey hotel casino will “…contain approximately 183,000 square feet of gaming space. The full gaming table configuration includes 80 VIP tables, 54%more than initially planned, reflecting Crown Macau’s strong positioning as the only casino in Macau designed and built to specifically cater to the VIP patron. “Crown Macau Hotel

Jun

17

Melco PBL Slides

Filed Under Macao, Cotai, Melco PBL, Crown Macau, Wall Street, City of Dreams | Leave a Comment

(1 of 3 postings today)

Here is a link for some slides that Melco PBL used for a presentation to investors. Nothing really new, but there are some pretty nice pictures in there.

Jun

3

Crown Macao walk-through

Filed Under Macao, Cotai, Crown Macau | Leave a Comment

A nice first hand account of Melco-PBL’s Crown Macao casino is available over at GoMacau.com’s blog. Looks like its doing better based on this snippet:

“…frankly I was impressed. There were a bunch of punters on the first two floors. We went to the top floor bar to swill a few finely concocted drinks. Fair prices, nice ambience.“

For more take a look at their blog.

May

24

Crown Macau grand opening details

Filed Under Macau, Macao, Cotai, Melco PBL, Crown Macau | Leave a Comment

(Posting 3 of 3 today)

Melco PBL learns about Murphy’s Law>

According to Destination-Macau, the opening of Taipa Island’s Crown Macau was a sheer disaster. Poorly planned and poorly executed, but probably not unpredicted given the way that the Crown Macau construction timeline and budget has gone so far. (*more below*)

You have to hope that the Macau slot parlor operator and Australian giant have learned something from this debacle and will be ready for the really important grand opening of their Cotai hotel casino, City of Dreams, when it opens in a few years.

Here is a pretty neat Dragone video from the grand opening

May

18

Crown Macau off to poor start

Filed Under Macau, Macao, Cotai, Melco PBL, Taipa, Crown Macau | 1 Comment

Uh-oh!

Only open a week and already deserted?

“Our latest visit was shortly before noon today, when we walked into the newest casino, on Taipa Island, and found staff to be far outnumbering visitors. On the fifth floor, where the high minimum-bet tables are located, we found not a single customer.” (*more below*)

Read more of the spot-check.

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