Lawrence Ho Yau Lung, chairman and chief executive of casino group Melco Resorts & Entertainment Ltd, has confirmed to GGRAsia that before year-end it will start revamp work for the meeting space at the Grand Hyatt Macau hotel (pictured) at its flagship City of Dreams complex in Macau’s Cotai district.
“This year, so far, we will be starting work at Grand Hyatt; then, we are looking at Countdown, and afterwards we will look at Altira and others,” stated Mr Ho. The Countdown is another hotel tower at City of Dreams, while the group’s Altira Macau casino hotel is located in Taipa.
He added: “Each property has a cycle, eventually it will need to be renovated.” Earlier this month, the Melco Resorts chairman had mentioned the willingess of the group to reinvest in its existing hotel facilities.
Asked on Thursday what the focus was for Grand Hyatt Macau, Mr Ho stated: “We are having investment on the MICE [meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions space] there, to answer the government’s wish to see more high-quality MICE space.”
Referring to his company’s non-gaming investment pledge, Mr Ho said: “For us, we can focus on creating a space for meetings and incentives. So we will be working on those areas… we are pretty much refreshing and upgrading our existing MICE space [at Grand Hyatt].”
On Thursday, Mr Ho also said the company had taken note of commentary by Macau’s Chief Executive, Ho Iat Seng. He had in April mentioned the government would like to see more mid-market – i.e., four-star and three-star – hotels developed in the city, so a greater number of package-tour vistors could afford to stay.
The Melco Resorts CEO told GGRAsia: “Countdown has over 300 rooms, and nowadays, as the Chief Executive mentioned, the city needs more hotel rooms.”
Initially “we thought of reducing the number of rooms, but making the room size bigger; now we might keep the number of keys – but these are all still some early conceptual thoughts,” he noted.
The casino entrepreneur also gave some comment on the upcoming autumn Golden Week holidays in the Macau market, where the group also runs the Studio City casino resort with minority investment partners.
He stated: “This year’s [autumn] Golden Week is special – in the sense that it is a period joined with the Mid-Autumn Festival – so it is one day extra than the usual [festivities], and it is better.”
He added: “We feel that we are going strong; from some early bookings that we saw, it has exceeded 2019-level.”
The Melco Resorts boss added that although non-peak period customer volume was “yet to catch up with 2019-level; the average spend per customer is higher than 2019-level”.
Mr Ho was speaking to GGRAsia on the sidelines of a Thursday event regarding a Melco Resorts project to help the Macau government revitalise part of the city’s Inner Harbour district and also the Mount Fortess, to encourage more tourists to go to those Macau peninsula locations.
In December, it was disclosed that MOP10-billion (US$1.24-billion) of Melco Resorts’ MOP11.8-billion Macau reinvestment commitment, was for non-gaming. Of the MOP10 billion, circa MOP4.2 billion is for entertainment-related activities, and circa MOP1.9 billion is for developing markets of overseas customers, a policy aim of the local government.
