In a brief press release today, Wynn Macau, Limited announced that the new Wynn Palace casino resort will open in the Cotai area of Macau on August 22, 2016. In the statement to media Wynn Macau?said, “The company expects that the opening of Wynn Palace will help launch a new era of prosperity for Macau, attracting more international tourists to the city and further supporting its development as a world center of tourism and leisure,” and ended the release with a note that room reservations are now being accepted via the company’s website, email, and phone.
The news comes as a relief to many who watched the opening date move back and forth on the calendar, at one point due to construction mis-estimates ?by the contractor. In December, Steve Wynn told media that the date which had once been announced for March 25, 2016 would be moving to June 25. ““What has happened is, for the past six months, the builder, Leighton, had a 90-day completion bonus of $38 million,” Wynn said. “March 25 was the date. They had been telling us up until two or three weeks ago, ‘We’ll make it,’ and they had to tell us in advance so we could start hiring people for the whole run-up to the opening.”
In late April this year it was announced that a recruitment drive had netted 3600 employees for the? the $4.1 billion Macau development. In May, Fitch Ratings announced that they expected Wynn Palace to do well in?the struggling marketplace. Room prices are expected to be in the top tier, behind only?Ritz Carlton and Banyan Tree, according to a market report on Asia Gaming Brief, with a slow ramp-up, and the potential for reduced prices if initial demand is not as high as expected.
No new to market table allocation has not been announced yet, but the government has said earlier that no new properties would get more than their share of the existing table cap, with most analysts prediction no more than 200-250 new tables. However, the property is expected to perform well, capturing additional market share already held by Wynn Macau and utilizing synergies such as labor costs and possibly moving as many as 50 tables from the flagship Wynn Macau Casino?that may be?underutilized.