Nepal’s Tiger Palace casino resort has hotel soft launch

Sep 21, 2017 Newsdesk Latest News, Rest of Asia, Top of the deck  

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Boutique Asian casino operator and developer Silver Heritage Group Ltd says it has had a soft opening – for hotel accommodation-only – of its Tiger Palace Resort Bhairahawa (pictured) in Nepal.

“The development of Tiger Palace continues ahead of schedule and within the revised budgeted cost of US$51.8 million, and the first paying hotel guests are booked in for today, 20 September 2017,” said the firm in a Wednesday filing to the Australian Securities Exchange.

Work on hospitality facilities including a spa, gym and swimming pool was “being completed over the next 10 days,” added the document.

“The casino remains on schedule to open by 30 November 2017 and the casino operations team have begun their training programme on site at Tiger Palace,” stated the filing.

The firm’s 2016 annual report, published in March, described Tiger Palace as due to have a 100-room, “five-star resort hotel”. It added the resort would have a gaming area of 2,471 square metres (26,600 sq feet), with 462 sq ms of that for “high limit customers”. The casino would have “at least” 52 tables and 200 electronic gaming machines, the annual report added.

The new venue is near Nepal’s border with the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, one of that country’s wealthiest measured by gross domestic product, and which does not offer legal casino gambling.

An August 2015 report by brokerage Union Gaming Securities Asia Ltd said that the opening of Singapore’s two casino resorts in 2010 coincided with a sharp rise in the number of people from India visiting that city-state.

An April 2016 report by business consultancy Global Market Advisors LLC said casino gambling by the growing middle class of Indian nationals had the potential to generate nearly US$10.2 billion annually by the year 2025 provided that the right product was close to key Indian markets.

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