GGRAsia – Holiday Inn to be Londoner Hotel, room count halved: Sands

Holiday Inn to be Londoner Hotel, room count halved: Sands

May 06, 2019 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

Macau casino developer and operator Sands China Ltd is dropping the Holiday Inn brand from its Sands Cotai Central casino complex, as part of the project to turn the latter into a themed resort called the Londoner Macao.

Work to revamp Sands Cotai Central started earlier this year via the Holiday Inn Macao Cotai Central, where hoardings have been put up in an atrium area of the building. Once the revamp is completed, the hotel tower will open with the Londoner Hotel moniker, a spokesperson from Sands China told GGRAsia.

“The 1,200-key Holiday Inn Macao Cotai Central will be converted to the approximately 600 all-suite Londoner Hotel,” said the person. But the other existing hotel brands at the property – including St. Regis, Sheraton and Conrad – will be kept after the revamp of the complex, the person added.

The company – a unit of U.S.-based casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp – has also changed the name of the St. Regis Tower Suites to the Londoner Tower Suites, as confirmed by the spokesperson.

In October last year, Las Vegas Sands Corp said the group would spend US$2.2 billion in investment in Macau, including the rebranding of the Sands Cotai Central. All of the Londoner Tower Suites will be managed by Sands China, the spokesperson told GGRAsia.

With the conversion of the existing 1,200 rooms into the 600-suite Londoner Hotel, as well as the development of the Londoner Tower Suites, the casino firm is seeking better to accommodate its so-called premium-mass gambling customers, a segment that industry observers say it has been expanding in the Macau market.

Robert Goldstein, president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sands, addressed the changes in the revamp of Sands Cotai Central during the firm’s first-quarter earnings call.

“The landscape in Macau has changed dramatically since 2014. This is a market driven by mass and premium mass… We have the scale and the quality of rooms, and suites, and retail and gaming and entertainment to excel in this environment,” said the executive.

Mr Goldstein said additionally that the name change to the Londoner Tower Suites was “more of a lifestyle brand decision … to focus on our own brand as part of the Londoner umbrella”.

He added: “We’re going to control 95 percent of the product there [Londoner Tower Suites]. Anyway, it won’t be for sale. It will be comped – if we’re successful – 100 percent of the time.”

Mr Goldstein mentioned the case of the Parisian Macao, where the company recently completed the conversion of 600 rooms into 300 suites: “It turned out to be a very good idea,” he stated on the conference call.

The executive said also that there would likely be some more construction disruption at the Sands Cotai Central starting “in the summer”, although he did not quantify such disruption.