Melco venture opens third satellite casino in Cyprus

Jul 17, 2019 Newsdesk Latest News, Top of the deck, World  

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Cyprus Casinos says it has opened its third satellite casino, in the Cypriot resort town of Ayia Napa.

Cyprus Casinos issued on Monday a written announcement saying the new satellite casino, called C2 Ayia Napa, supplements its other establishments elsewhere in Cyprus: the C2 Nicosia and C2 Larnaca satellite casinos, and its C2 Limassol temporary main casino.

Cyprus Casinos is a joint venture by gaming magnate Lawrence Ho Yau Lung’s Hong Kong-listed Melco International Development Ltd and a Cypriot consortium, ICR Cyprus Holdings Ltd. It has a 30-year exclusive licence to run casinos in Cyprus.

The Cyprus Casinos announcement says C2 Ayia Napa has 50 gaming machines.

The casino operator said Melco International had designed the building housing the casino specially for Ayia Napa. The building sits on a plot of 13,829 square metres (148,854 sq feet) and contains 367 square metres of floor space. C2 Ayia Napa has over 40 employees, according to Monday’s statement.

The announcement quotes the president of Cyprus Casinos, Craig Ballantyne, as saying: “The casino will offer an exceptional entertainment experience for both local and foreign guests.”

The Cyprus Casinos establishments opened so far are the precursors of a large casino resort, to be called the City of Dreams Mediterranean.

The City of Dreams Mediterranean is being built in the Cypriot city of Limassol and is due to be finished in 2021. Operations of the temporary C2 Limassol will cease when the City of Dreams Mediterranean is launched.

The casino resort will comprise a five-star hotel in a 16-storey building containing 500 guest rooms or suites, facilities for meetings and exhibitions, and a casino containing over 100 gaming tables and 1,000 gaming machines.

Earlier in July Cyprus Casinos announced that patrons had paid 880,000 visits to its casinos since the first opened a year ago: about 710,000 to C2 Limassol, about 130,000 to C2 Nicosia and about 40,000 to C2 Larnaca.

In June NASDAQ-listed Melco Resorts and Entertainment Ltd announced that it was acquiring for US$375 million all of the Melco International stake in the developer of the City of Dreams Mediterranean.

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