GGRAsia – Imperial Pacific casino ops resumed Sunday: firm

Imperial Pacific casino ops resumed Sunday: firm

Nov 19, 2018 Newsdesk Latest News, Top of the deck, World

The local casino unit of Imperial Pacific International Holdings Ltd has resumed operations on the Pacific island of Saipan after a brief suspension, said the parent in a Sunday filing.

“The company [had] temporarily suspended its Saipan integrated resort operations since 16 November 2018 (Friday) for two days and operations have resumed [as] normal on 18 November 2018 (Sunday),” said the announcement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

A Thursday statement issued to local media had said local unit Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC was “temporarily” suspending operations. It cited disruption to tourism and the then ongoing pause applied to civil aviation at the main airport following a super typhoon designated Typhoon Yutu, that struck the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a United States jurisdiction, on October 25.

In its Sunday filing, Imperial Pacific International Holdings gave no further details on the reason for resumption of operations.

The Saipan Tribune newspaper reported on Monday – citing sources it did not identify – that Imperial Pacific Resort (pictured in a file photo) – which currently has a casino but is still to complete a permanent hotel facility at the site – was running a particular shift system pending the island returning to normality.

The news outlet said the local unit had re-opened “at about 6pm” local time on Sunday and would “continue to have one-shift operations from 6pm to 2am daily, until everything normalises on the island”.

The news outlet further reported that Saipan’s airport resumed its regular daytime flights on Friday and planned to restart its regular night-time schedule on Tuesday.

On its interim balance sheet filed at the end of August, the Imperial Pacific parent firm said VIP rolling chip volume at its Saipan resort was about HKD100.3 billion (US$12.81 billion) for the first six months of this year, down 48.9 percent in the corresponding period last year.