Genting to make South Korea debut with S$2.8b casino resort

HONG KONG — Resorts World is going to South Korea.

Casino operator Genting Singapore — which runs Resorts World Sentosa — will co-develop a US$2.2 billion (S$2.8 billion) project on South Korea’s Jeju Island with a Chinese property company, to tap demand for gambling and tourism.

The tie-up, announced in Hong Kong yesterday, marks Genting’s first foray into South Korea, an increasingly popular destination for Chinese tourists, who flock there to gamble and shop, thanks in part to easier visa rules.

Genting and Hong Kong-listed Landing International Development will jointly build the project on a 2.3 million sq m site, Mr Andrew Lee, Executive Director of the property company, said at a press conference in Hong Kong yesterday.

The two companies will form a 50-50 joint venture to develop the project, which will be modelled after Resorts World Sentosa, said Mr Yang Zhihui, Chairman of the Chinese firm.

Construction will begin in June, the Chairman said. The resort will have a total of 800 gaming tables and a casino floor of 27,000 sq m, he said.

In addition to the casino, the complex will include luxury hotels, a shopping mall, a theme park and residential facilities.

A mock-up of the complex showed roller coasters, hotels with whimsical, castle-like facades and replicas of monuments such as the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids.

The resort is expected to open for business in 2017.

Gaming revenues in South Korea totalled US$2.7 billion last year, said research house CIMB. The figure is slightly higher than the revenues in the Philippines at US$2.6 billion, but trailing both Singapore at US$6.4 billion and Macau at US$45 billion.

South Korea forbids its citizens from gambling in casinos outside of Kangwon Land, an isolated resort located three hours by car from Seoul. The country has 16 foreigner-only casinos, whose primary customers come from China and Japan.

Many Asian countries, including the Philippines and Vietnam, are building large-scale casino resorts, hoping to attract Chinese punters and imitate the success of Macau, the world’s casino capital which rakes seven times more in annual gaming revenue than Las Vegas.

Genting Singapore’s parent company, South-east Asia’s largest gaming and leisure group Genting Bhd, operates a sprawling gaming empire from the Bahamas to Singapore.

Genting Bhd recently announced it is making a renewed play for operations in Miami, Florida, after previous plans for a US$3.1 billion resort two years ago failed to pan out.

It also has plans to spend up to US$4 billion developing an unfinished resort on the Las Vegas strip, Chief Executive Officer Lim Kok Thay said in December. Agencies