Are casinos keeping pace with the tastes of the Super Rich?
casino life splashes out on a Gulfstream 5 and heads to Paris to find out more
N
Stephen J. Karoul is VP of Casino Marketing at Foxwoods Resort Casino MGM Grand at Foxwoods but until recently was part of the senior management team that opened the $5.5 billion Marina Bay Sands Casino in Singapore.
Professor Robert Ambrose is a 30 year veteran of the casino industry in the United States. Presently he is an Independent Gaming Consultant and an Adjunct Professor of Casino Management for Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.
ew hotels are opening with increased regularity in Paris, London and New York to cater specifically for the tastes of multi- millionaires. Recently, the Royal Monceau Hotel, Paris opened with a room rate of - wait for it - €23,000 a night and it is only one of
several super-deluxe hotels that will open in the French Capital in the next few months, each tailor-made for the super-rich. Every sumptuous detail of the hotel, from the glasses behind the bar to the chandeliers hanging above it, has been selected, fashioned, carefully positioned, with no expense spared. So, what is going on? We are in the grip of a world-wide recession and yet hotels are being built for the super-rich who quite obviously are not affected to the same degree as most normal people on the street. So the question that springs to mind is “Are casinos keeping pace with the tastes and requirements of the super rich or can they do more?
Stephen Karoul has plenty of experience of dealing with wealthy customers and made the following observations:
“There is an old expression that says “beauty is in the eye of
the beholder”. I think we all understand what that means. A similar expression today might be “recession is in the wallet of the beholder”.
“What this means is that recessions affect people differently.
One thing that we have seen in the casino industry is that the rich are usually very rich so during recessions they may be less rich but still rich. Therefore the news about hotels designed to service the super rich does not surprise me at all. This means that the super rich may now be just incredibly rich versus super rich even during this difficult economic recession. I just returned from two years in Asia working in Macau and Singapore. I was part of the senior management team that opened the Marina Bay Sands Casino in Singapore which is a US $5.5 billion casino resort project. The Marina Bay Sands is absolutely magnificent in every regard. Mr. Sheldon Adelson, Chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, is a true visionary who was able to see the trends in Asia as far as wealth goes. LVS casinos in both Macau and in Singapore are
16 casino life magazine
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52