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Russia – Tigre de Cristal opens as first casino in Primorye gaming zone

By - 13 October 2015

Melco International has now opened the first phase of Tigre de Cristal, the first casino to open in the Russian gaming zone of Primorye close to the city of Vladivostok.

Nearly 5,000 guests, including the governor of Primorye, visited the casino within the first four hours of its soft opening. Phase one of the project includes a hotel with 121 hotel rooms, seven food and beverage outlets, and three main gaming areas. Gaming is made up of 42 mass-market tables, 25 VIP tables, and 769 slot machines and electronic table games.

The casino is looking to challenge Macau for players from China and Korea, although with 300m people living within a three-hour flight of Vladivostok, many more Asian countries will be targeted.
Melco International owner Lawrence Ho, the main investor in the Russian project, got involved in the project in 2013 via his Hong Kong-listed Summit Ascent Holdings. Mr. Ho and his partners have vowed to invest US$700m in total, including a second phase currently scheduled to open in 2018.

Eric Landheer, Director of Corporate Finance and Strategy at Summit Ascent, said: “Lawrence is very committed to Macau with the Studio City project and the other stuff he has going there. But it wasn’t a bad idea to diversify a little bit. Where we sit, we’re next to Japan, which has no gambling legislation passed so far. You’ve got South Korea talking about setting up a bunch of different types of casino resorts, but in reality they are ‘foreigner-only’ resorts, and they are entirely predicated on Chinese customers. We are in a different situation. We can welcome Koreans, we can welcome the Japanese, we can welcome the northeast Chinese, and we have our local Russian customer base as well.”

Phase two of Tigre de Cristal will see 500 rooms added across two hotels, one four-star and one five-star. A further 500 slot machines will be installed alongside a further 100 VIP tables, 70 mass-market gaming tables, a shopping mall, food and beverage outlets; a spa centre; a nightclub; and conference and auditorium facilities. The phase two complex will be three times the size of phase one.

“Our current estimated capex [capital expenditure] for our phase two – which we expect to open sometime in 2018 – is approximately US$500m. But we will evaluate whether that’s sufficient or whether or not we want to do more than that, based on the business and cash flows we have coming in for phase one,” Mr. Landheer added.

Four operators have so far received the green light to develop gaming resorts in the Russian gambling zone.

Cambodian-based operator NagaCorp has started construction work on its casino resort in the Entertainment Zone of the Primorye Region in Russia’s Far East for a project which it is believed will be called Seaside Entertainment Resorts City. The resort will be built in three phases, with the first phase seeing an investment of up to US$200m. It has been designed by Las Vegas casino architects, Steelman Partners.

NagaCorp has said the resort will house 100 gaming tables, 500 slots, a 2,000 capacity theatre and a spa.

Diamond Fortune Holdings Prim is building a US$914m five-star hotel, casino and entertainment complex to be called Selena World Resort & Casino. Diamond Fortune CEO George Kondakov said the first phase would cover about 10 hectares.

Royal Time meanwhile is looking to open its first phase by 2017. Designed by Steelman Partners it will include a 320 room hotel with a casino. Rashid Taimasov, Director General of Royal Time, said the third and final stage should be completed by 2021.

Another meanwhile called Iida Group Holdings, a Japanese property developer, wants to invest between $380m and $450m in developing a casino resort on Russky Island near the far eastern city of Vladivostok, with plans to recoup its investment within seven years. It has yet to be approved though.

Tigre de Cristal 4

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