The Sheraton hotel brand is to disappear from The Londoner Macao casino complex (pictured), to be replaced with the accommodation branding “Londoner Grand” by December this year, according to guidance from Las Vegas Sands Corp, the parent of Sands China Ltd, amid the group’s second-quarter earnings results.
The currently-closed Pacifica casino at the property is on track to reopen in December, also under the branding “Londoner Grand”, said on Wednesday Robert Goldstein, the parent firm’s chairman and chief executive. He was speaking on the group’s second-quarter call.
According to a presentation deck issued with the earnings, the relaunched Londoner Grand hotel towers will eventually have 2,405 rooms compared to the Sheraton-branded towers’ pre-renovation 3,968. The number of suites within that total, will go up to 1,500, from 360 previously.
Grant Chum Kwan Lock, chief executive of Sands China, stated that the second-quarter hotel revenue shortfall at The Londoner Macao – which saw the Sheraton towers reduced to 2,500 keys from nearly 4,000 rooms – was in the region of US$15 million to US$20 million.
He also explained that amid renovation work at the property – that had an impact on Sands China’s overall earnings for the three months to June 30 – things would get more constrained before they get better.
In the third quarter “the disruption will actually increase from a room perspective,” from 2,500 keys on average in the second quarter, said Mr Chum.
“We expect to be down to 1,300 on average, across the third quarter…. we will also have a full quarter of Pacifica casino closure,” versus “65 percent of the second quarter being without Pacifica,” he stated.
Mr Chum also gave some commentary on a slowdown market-wide in the second quarter for mainland China visitors from places beyond Macau’s neighbouring Guangdong province.
He stated: “I don’t have specific reasons why we [the market] have had a slowdown in the recovery rate for non-Guangdong,” visitors.
Mr Chum added: “I think there is a bifurcation… where the premium segments are still doing incredibly well. Actually this is the highest spend per [Macau] visitor arrival, since the Covid recovery began.
Even in some of the “lower price points,” namely slots, the performance was “incredibly strong,” the Sands China CEO noted.
He stated: “Those two factors drove record high volumes in our non-rolling drop and slot handle. But in the middle, especially the base [ mass ] tables, especially unrated [players], that is highly correlated to the strength of visitation and it just wasn’t as strong this quarter, even if you adjust for seasonality.”
The Las Vegas Sands management was also asked on the call whether its Marina Bay Sands property in Singapore had seen any softening in demand from Chinese consumers, amid the widely reported moderation in China’s economic growth.
Mr Goldstein stated: “We’ve not seen a slowdown [from] China. We just simply see the same as we see in the last couple of quarters, which is solid.”
He added: “We have a diverse customer base in Singapore.”
Mr Goldstein stated the clients at Marina Bay Sands were from “all over the place… Vietnam, Japan, [South] Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia.
“So I don’t think we saw much different than the past year, except where obviously… seasonality is [generally] in play in the second quarter.”
(Updated July 25, 11.20am)
