CASINO NEWS: LATEST FROM SINGAPORE, MACAU AND AUSTRALIA
MARINA BAY SANDS TERROR ATTACK FOILED
The Marina Bay Sands integrated resort in Singapore has narrowly dodged becoming the target of a terror attack.
Last Friday, Indonesian authorities announced that they’d arrested six individuals suspected of plotting the attack which involved a plan to fire rockets at Marina Bay from Batam, an Indonesian island located across the Strait of Singapore.
The men were detained following a series of raids on multiple locations, including one at which weapons were found.
The detained individuals are allegedly part of the KGR@Katibah terrorist group. They are believed to have had help organizing the attack from Muhammad Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian currently fighting in Syria as part of the ISIS terror group. Bahrun is suspected of involvement in January’s terror attack in Jakarta that killed eight people.
WYNN PALACE & SANDS PARISIAN SET TO OPEN IN MACAU
The Wynn Palace, owned and operated by Wynn Resorts is the company’s first resort on the Cotai strip and their third skyscraper in Macau. It is set to open next Monday on August 22. The integrated resort will feature a luxury hotel with 1,700 rooms, a casino, an 8-acre performance lake, gondolas, meeting facilities, spa and salon and retail and dining venues.
However, the new $US4.2 billion casino/resort will only get 150 gaming tables, just over a third of the 400 applied for as the Chinese city signals it’s serious about limiting gambling growth.
Wynn Palace will be authorised to operate 100 tables when it opens with 50 more to be allocated in the following two years. The resort also received approvals for 1,145 slot machines.
Another major resort will open on the Cotai strip just three weeks later. Las Vegas Sands Corp. will open The Parisian, a resort embellished with a half-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower, on Sept. 13.
With the opening of The Parisian, Sands will have 13,000 rooms and four interconnected resorts in Macau with four performance centres, 2 million square feet of convention space and an arena.
“It is one of the most beautifully decorated public spaces for any hotel in the world,” Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson said. “It is really, really magnificent and is going to be a high-demand hotel.”
PLANS ANNOUNCED FOR MILDURA CASINO
Australia Cove Limited has released plans to create a casino and convention centre in Mildura, hoping that the Victorian Government will give the go ahead for a second casino gaming license within the state. The developer plans on spending $US 300M ($A 392M) to create The Mildura.
The proposal by the company includes a casino, five-star hotel and a convention centre. There have been previous attempts to build a second casino in Victoria, all of which have failed. The government currently does not have any plans to issue a second license for casino gaming in the area, although the project has strong support from business and local community groups.
The convention centre is expected to provide a boost to the tourism and small business areas of Mildura while the casino and hotel would provide entertainment as well as jobs for the area.
