MGM Mirage said yesterday it was unconcerned about the overcapacity of hotels and casinos in  Macau, a day before it opens its casino. MGM Mirage chief executive officer Terry Lanni also dismissed fears about rising construction costs as foreign companies poured in billions of dollars into building casinos and hotels to tap the booming gaming market.

MGM Grand Macau on “The Strip”

“I can tell you that the rising construction costs … we can find those in New Jersey and we can find that in Mississippi. That’s something that is not limited to this particular marketplace,” he told reporters.There have also been concerns that demand from the mainland could fail to materalise for political and economic reasons.

However, Lanni believes that the strong economic growth from the nearby mainland provinces would be able sustain in a city where gaming revenues of 7.3 billion US dollars last year overtook the famous Las Vegas Strip. “They have had that growth for a long period of time and I don’t see that fading any time soon,” he said. “I suspect that the marketplace will sufficiently grow to meet the demands of the ever-growing casino population.”

“I’ve been in this business for 31 years and there isn’t a year has gone by that people are saying: aren’t you building one room too many and or one casino too many in Las Vegas?”So far we haven’t and I guess you really don’t know until you build that one room too many,” he added.MGM Mirage will open on 18 December 2007 MGM Grand Macau, its only casino resort outside the United States.

The 1.25 billion US dollar casino resort is half-owned by MGM Mirage and half by Pansy Ho, daughter of casino mogul Stanley Ho.The casino’s opening means that all six of Macau’s gaming concessions are finally in action, after the city ended Stanley Ho’s 40-year monopoly in 2001.The liberalisation has attracted a flood of investment from foreign operators including Las Vegas Sands which was the first major American company to have opened a casino here.

Courtesy| Macau Daily Times

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