Las Vegas Sands to invest $10bn in Macau resorts

HONG KONG: US gaming giant Las Vegas Sands will boost its investment in Macau’s Cotai Strip casino resorts by 25% to $10bn. Sheldon Adelson, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said the group will spend $2bn to build an additional 6,000 hotel rooms in Cotai, the burgeoning new gambling centre in the former Portuguese enclave.

“We’ll have 19,000 or 20,000 rooms by the end of ’08 or early ’09,” Mr Adelson said in an interview with the South China Morning Post.

Sands’ project in Cotai, the 80-hectare strip of reclaimed land between the islands of Taipa and Coloane, will feature a replica of the successful Venetian hotel in Las Vegas as well as up to five hotels including InterContinental and Holiday Inn operations.

Mr Adelson told a leading daily last week about the group’s plans for a new billion dollar island leisure complex in Hengqin Island in southern China, near Macau.

The proposed four million square foot (360,000-square-metre) business and residential complex would include 20,000 hotel rooms and up to 30,000 apartments.

The Sands was the first foreign-owned casino to open in Macau after its gaming market was liberalised in ’02 after 40 years under the control of tycoon Stanley Ho.

Las Vegas Sands claims its casino in Macau — which opened in ’04 — is the world's largest. In addition, rival US tycoon Steve Wynn plans to open a $1.2bn resort there.