Melco Resorts and Entertainment changing the focus of Altira Macau
In Macau and Melco Resorts and Entertainment Limited has reportedly announced that it will soon be transforming the casino within its Altira Macau property into a premium-mass venue at the expense of any VIP business.
According to a report from Inside Asian Gaming, the Hong Kong-listed casino firm made the revelation during a recent conference call to discuss its second-quarter financial results after having earlier relocated the 216-room facility’s existing VIP and junket operations to its nearby Studio City Macau and City of Dreams Macau properties. The source detailed that the coming shift in focus is now expected to take up to a year to complete as gaming areas not already serving premium-mass customers are renovated alongside any associated non-gaming assets.
Exciting episode:
Opened as the Crown Macau in May of 2007 under a partnership between Melco Resorts and Entertainment Limited and Australian pioneer Crown Resorts Limited, the 38-story property had eventually featured a 170,000 sq ft casino offering about 170 gaming tables as well as some 20 slots. Situated in the Macau district of Taipa, the venue reportedly assumed its current moniker in June of 2009 following the opening of the 300-room Crown Towers Macau hotel at the same pair’s giant City of Dreams Macau development.
Disappointing downturn:
David Sisk serves as the Chief Operating Officer for Melco Resorts and Entertainment Limited and he reportedly told investors that his firm was changing Altira Macau’s focus following another quarterly slump from its VIP business. The executive purportedly explained that the property’s overall gaming revenues for the three months to the end of June improved by just 7.6% year-on-year to reach approximately $18.3 million while its associated adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization had come in at a loss of roughly $17.3 million.
Sisk reportedly stated…
“The idea is to take out a lot of the volatility given the kind of reduced volumes that we’ve been seeing over the last 18 months in the VIP business that created a lot of fluctuations. Unfortunately, we’ve been on the negative side of the whole equation, which has really exacerbated the losses over there and it’s just too much as we were essentially gambling in a way that didn’t make a lot of sense.”
Altered attention:
Sisk reportedly went on to declare that Melco Resorts and Entertainment Limited opted to transform the casino within its Altira Macau into a premium-mass facility after ‘really focusing in on where our bread and butter is and has always been’. He furthermore purportedly proclaimed that a lot of the operator’s recent profitability has come from the higher end of the mass-market segment and that it now intends to create ‘a boutique experience’ that will offer gamblers ‘something a little bit different’ when compared with its much larger City of Dreams Macau and Studio City Macau developments.