Despite the ongoing economic slowdown that caused local casinos to lay off employees and halt new projects, Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd still opened its 2-billion-U.S.-dollar casino property City of Dreams in Macao on time on Monday.

Second only to the Venetian Macao casino resort in size in Macao, the initial opening of City of Dreams features a casino with about 520 gaming tables and 1,350 gaming machines, over 20 restaurants and bars, retail space, a dome theater and about 600 guest rooms offered in two separate hotels Crown Towers and Hard Rock Hotel.

The new Melco Crown project was opened "on time" and "on budget", and "we haven't had trouble in building the project", said Lawrence Ho, co-chairman and CEO of Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd, a Nasdap-listed company, at a press conference before the official opening ceremony. The company is a joint venture between Ho, son of local gaming magnate Stanly Ho, and Australian billionaire James Packer.

He said that he believed the project is a good bet for the company since local gaming market is "picking up further" in recent months.

When asked about Chinese mainland's visa restrictions on its residents' trips to Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR), which has a great impact in local tourism since mainland visitors take a lion's share of the city's visitor arrivals, Ho said it is a national policy that he and his company cannot control, but he believes Macao will continue to attract more visitors with the market on track to recovery and better local infrastructures.

Neighboring Hong Kong, Macao is the only place in China where gambling is legal. The island city is home to 31 casinos, including Asia's largest casino resort Venetian Macao, before the opening of City of Dreams.

City of Dreams will need much less than the 70,000 daily visitors received by Venetian Macao, Ho said in a previous interview. The new Melco Crown project has a similar market goal with the Venetian, as Ho said the complex dose not just cater to gamblers, since "we have something for every body here (City of Dreams)", adding that the new project is also help build Macao into a multi-stay destination.

The city saw its gaming revenue dropped 13 percent year-on-year to 26 billion patacas (3.3 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter this year, and visitor arrivals also fell 8.1 percent year-on-year to 7.3 million in the first four months of 2009, according to the statistics from the SAR government.

Previously, the global financial crisis has led to the stalling of Las Vegas Sands' 12-billion-dollar Cotai Strip project on an area of reclaimed land in Macao, which is slated to build 11 resorts with a total of 20,000 hotel rooms and a number of casinos and shopping malls.

For the time being, the project's initial phase has been completed with the Venetian Macao and Four Seasons entering operation, but the construction of its lot 5 and 6, which include Shangri-La and Sheraton-branded hotels, has been halted by Sands due to financing problems, resulting in the loss of over 10,000 construction jobs. As part of its effort to cut back personnel costs, the LV Sands even "suggested" its employees in its two casinos resorts, the Sands Macao and Venetian Macao, to seek job vacancies at City of Dreams, according to the Macao Daily News.

Las Vegas Sands CEO and Chairman Sheldon Adelson has told AFP that he may have arranged financing necessary to restart stalled construction projects in Macao and the United States by the end of2009.

Although the economic figures still indicated that the slump is not over yet, but Lawrence Ho's optimism about the economy is shared by local scholars.

Given the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and other Asian regions are undergoing rapid economic recovery, local economic development is expected to stabilize in the second half of this year, with local GDP gradually narrows its negative growth, said Lau Pun Lap, president of the Macao Association of Economic Sciences.

He also said that the new Melco Crown property will make a good complement to the existing casino resorts in the Cotai Strip, and help attract more visitors to Macao and boost local economy.

Source:Xinhua