Casino sales at the Jeju Dream Tower casino resort (pictured in a file photo), on the South Korean holiday island of Jeju, decreased by 20.0 percent month-on-month in September, to approximately KRW14.33 billion (US$10.6 million), according to a Tuesday filing to the Korea Exchange. August sales had themselves been down 10.9-percent on July’s.
Nonetheless, September’s gaming-business sales judged year-on-year, were up 336.1 percent. The property’s casino sales are reported after deduction of rebates and commissions.
In September, table-game sales were nearly KRW13.15 billion, down 17.4 percent from August, but up 358.3 percent from a year earlier, a period when tourism to the island was still affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Last month’s machine-game sales stood at approximately KRW1.19 billion, down 40.8 percent sequentially, but up 183.8 percent from a year ago.
The September casino table “drop” – the amount paid by customers to purchase chips for table games – was approximately KRW103.76 billion, down 21.8 percent sequentially, though 67.7 percent higher than a year ago.
Jeju Dream Tower logged a total of 28,165 casino visitors in September, down only 1.9 percent from August.
The August casino visitor tally of the property, which stood at 28,718, had marked a monthly record for the casino since it opened in June 2021, according to financial data published on the website of the resort’s operator, Lotte Tour Development Co Ltd.
Hotel sales for September were approximately KRW7.91 billion, down 24.9 percent sequentially, according to the Tuesday filing. The tally also represented a decrease by 7.5 percent from the same month a year ago.
The firm gave no commentary on the reasons for the variations.
Casino sales for the first nine months this year totalled nearly KRW100.36 billion, up 186.5 percent from the prior-year period.
Table-game sales were KRW90.22 billion in the year to September 30, up 187.0 percent year-on-year; while machine-game sales rose by 182.7 percent, to nearly KRW10.14 billion.
The cumulative casino table drop for the first nine months of this year amounted to KRW888.16 billion, up 180.0 percent from the prior-year period.
Hotel sales in the January to September period stood at approximately KRW69.27 billion, a 23.2-percent decline from the prior-year period.
