Macau’s new luxury resorts
Known as the Vegas of the East, Macau has quite a reputation for its glamourous and extravagant offerings. However, due to gambling revenue decreasing year after year - including last year’s 40 per cent decline in VIP gaming - Macau has to rebrand itself away from the roulette table.
That is why, by the end of 2017, there are at least six new integrated resorts planned - bringing about 9000 new hotel rooms to the most densely populated region in the world.
The Parisian Macao The largest newcomer to Macau will be Sands China’s The Parisian Macao, set to open late this year with 2,900 rooms. It will join the popular The Venetian Macao, which opened in 2007, with walkways linking the two resorts. The Parisian Macao will feature a casino, meeting and conference spaces, a shopping mall with 130 boutiques and more than 10 restaurants, a rooftop terrace and pool, spa, theatre and a half-scale replica Eiffel Tower with a viewing platform where guests can get a 360-degree view of Cotai and mainland China.
Wynn Palace Wynn Palace is expected to open in August at a cost of £2.8billion. With 1700 rooms and suites across 28 storeys, Wynn Palace will be the second luxurious resort in Macau by Steve Wynn, Chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts. Guests are transported to the resort in “uniquely themed” SkyCabs that traverse a stunning 8-acre Performance Lake and into the heart of the resort. The resort will feature large-scale floral displays, large gaming spaces, meeting and event facilities, a spa and salon, luxury retail and gourmet dining outlets.
The 13 Next up is billionaire Stephen Hung’s new “seven-star” hotel, The 13. The ultra-luxurious hotel is being billed as the most luxurious hotel in the world, with rooms reported to cost upwards of £70,000 a night. Named after Hung’s lucky number, The 13 will open its 200 rooms this summer. Guests will have access to 24-hour butlers, certified by the English Guild of Butlers, and chauffeur service in a fleet of Rolls-Royce Phantoms. New York architect Peter Marino, creator of flagship stores for the likes of Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, is designing the hotel with a blend of 17th-century French Renaissance and Baroque décor.
Construction on the 780-room City of Dreams Fifth Hotel Tower started in 2013 and is set to be complete by 2017. The building will be Melco Crown's fifth hotel in Macau and will “combine dramatic public spaces and generous guest rooms with innovative engineering and formal cohesion.” The hotel will resemble a large monolithic block with a latticed structure surrounding the body. It will contain 150,000 square metres of floor space, as well as meeting and event facilities, restaurants, a spa and an sky pool. Viviana Muscettola, senior associate at Zaha Hadid Architects, who are in charge of the project, explained why he thinks the new tower will outshine its competition in Macau: “Most other hotels will just give you a certain standard of luxury like a chandelier, a water feature and luxury materials. In this case, I think the guests will really be able to experience the future of construction. It’s not going to be a fake Venice or a fake Paris. It’s going to be the future of our generation, the future of inhabited buildings.” Also coming to Macau is the £2billion MGM Cotai, which has recently had its opening pushed back until the first half of 2017, as well as the 2000-room Lisboa Palace, scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of 2017. The fact that 80 per cent of Macau's visitors come from mainland China may be the reason for the often over-the-top designs and extravagances of the region's resorts. Nonetheless, with gambling revenue decreasing, these resorts will need to become destinations in their own right to keep the tourists coming. Which of the new resorts would you stay at? Tell us what you think...