With 3,000 guest rooms, a casino, and ample event and meeting space, Las Vegas Sands’ latest Macao-based project, the Parisian Macao, is expected to rival the current most popular resorts on the peninsula.
The Chinese word for luck is yùnqì. But, if you ask billionaire businessman Sheldon Adelson how to win big in China, he just might offer the French word instead: chance
The reason isn’t ancestry—Adelson is Ukrainian Jewish, not French—but rather strategy. Although most Chinese citizens lack the money, knowledge, and tourist visas to travel the world, Adelson wagers that they nevertheless want to see it. So, when his company began planning its fifth Chinese development, it decided to bring the outside world in. Specifically, it’s bringing Paris, which attracts more than 15 million international visitors every year, including more than 225,000 Chinese tourists.
“Mainland Chinese are into discovery; China is just beginning to open up to the rest of the world, and they really want to see what’s out there,” says Mike Lentz, senior vice president of development at Adelson’s Las Vegas-based company, Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which specializes in “MICE-driven, integrated” resorts that combine gaming and nongaming attractions, including meeting, incentive, conference, and exhibition (MICE) facilities; retail malls; dining; and entertainment space. “With that in mind, we decided a themed resort was the best way to go. We thought about doing something themed around Great Britain. We also looked at a Spanish theme and themes inspired by other places in Asia, like India and Thailand. The clear standout, however, was always Paris.”
Adelson’s Francophilic resort, the Parisian Macao, is currently under construction in Macao (also spelled Macau), a peninsula that is one of two “special administrative regions” operating within but largely independent of mainland China (the other is Hong Kong). Because China is by far the world’s most populous country, and because Macao is the only place where Chinese can legally gamble, Macao is ground zero for gaming-industry growth.
READ MORE