Bricks & Mortar

Yoshifumi Kato, president and CEO of Keihan Holdings, who announced last year that it was “his greatest mission” to connect by railway the anticipated IR at Yumeshima, Osaka, with Japan’s ancient capital of Kyoto, is seeing his vision come nearer reality, according to a recent article in the Nihon Keizai Shinbun.

Genting Malaysia has added a virtual reality zone to its Resorts World Genting property, in conjunction with The Void, which plans “aggressive expansion” across Asia.

The overall service levels in Macau’s casinos has slipped from the same period last year, though there has been an improvement in the proactiveness and tolerance levels of staff, an anonymous survey found.

Sands China is likely to be the key driver for Las Vegas Sands for the next few years as it benefits from the increasing size of the mass market, according to an in depth analysis of the group by Bernstein Research.

Many of Macau’s casinos are in a race against time to ensure their newly-equipped VIP smoking lounges have been approved by the authorities.

In a Tokyo interview with Bloomberg television, Melco Resorts & Entertainment Chairman & CEO Lawrence Ho said of his IR license hunt that “the opportunity for Melco is priceless and we will do whatever we need to do to win.”

Paradise Co. casino sales fell almost 5 percent in November as a gain in electronic gaming machine revenue failed to offset a drop in tables.

Reef Casino Trust, a unit of Casinos Austria and Accor Casino Investments, says it expects lower profit in the 2018 financial year, due to a slower Chinese economy, competition from local slots and lower hotel rentals.

Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura says that the newly developed Yumeshima will need not only rail links, but also high-speed ferry services and wider bridges in order to meet the traffic needs of the future, and that all of this should be completed by FY2024.

MGM Resorts has opened a major art exhibition by the well-known Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama at its Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art in Las Vegas.