SJM Holdings will open the doors to Macau's 34th casino tomorrow in an attempt to take a bigger bite out of the growing market for day-tripping punters.
After an 18-month, HK$1.5 billion renovation of the old New Yaohan department store, Casino Oceanus is set to open with 260 mass-market gaming tables and 560 slot machines spread across three floors and 32,000 square metres. It will employ 2,400 people.
The interior was designed by casino architect Paul Steelman, who also did the Sands Macao, and the exterior of the building is covered with backlit 'bubbles' made of ethylene tetrafluoroethylene membrane, the same plastic material used on Beijing's Olympic Water Cube.
With no high-volume but low-margin VIP rooms, no junket operators, and a direct connection to Macau's main ferry terminal through a covered pedestrian footbridge, Oceanus is targeting 'pure mass market', according to SJM chief executive Ambrose So Shu-fai. 'It will cater to those who come to visit Macau only for a few hours,' he says.
By converting the department store, which SJM has leased from privately held parent Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau (STDM) for HK$4.9 million a month, and by dispensing with rooms or other amenities beyond a few food and beverage outlets and retail shops, the firm has spent only about one-sixth of what it cost to build the Grand Lisboa or the rival Wynn Macau.
'We spent a fraction of what our competitors did for a similar number of tables,' So (below) says.
Oceanus' 260 mass-market tables compare with 240 mass-market tables at the Grand Lisboa, which brought in HK$1.47 billion in casino winnings in the first six months of this year. Wynn Macau, by comparison, booked HK$1.66 billion in winnings from its 220 mass-market tables during the period.