Insight SAIPAN Imperial Palace
when I joined Imperial Pacific and came to visit Saipan, it’s fair to say that I understood the vision immediately.
Coming back to our headquarters in Hong Kong within the IFC building, we talked about building a temporary facility, not only to make a couple of dollars, but to train staff too. Building a temporary facility mean that we need to train people on the island who had never encountered gaming before, as there are no dealers or supervisors or anything - we had to start from scratch. But as we looked around the island, we couldn’t find a location to put a temporary casino. In the US, a temporary casino is basically a tent that you erect next to your facility, in which you place some tables, and when the big beautiful building opens and you take the tent down and move on.
However, there wasn’t a location nearby on which we could erect a temporary facility on the same site. Garapan is the largest village and the centre of the tourism industry on Saipan, it’s where the hotels situated and it’s home to the T Galleria DFS shopping mall. I was standing on the roof of the DFS complex looking at the parking area and wondering if we could put a temporary casino there, when the DFS General Manager explained that they were renovating half of the interior of the mall. If we cut a deal, we could place the temporary facility in the mall itself - which for us was a grand slam.
In the end we spent US$25m on a temporary facility,
we knew the type of clientele we were targeting to come to the island. Tis was the cream of the crop - the VIPs from China - we knew it couldn’t just be a tent. And it’s worked out beautifully. You have Armani, Louis Vuitton and right next door, there’s our casino. It looks like it’s always been there, despite the fact that we launched with a soft opening in July 2015.
People say that Saipan is in the middle of nowhere, but it’s not. If you’re Chinese it’s actually more convenient to visit Saipan than Macau. When the Chinese visit Macau they return home - they don’t leave Macau and go somewhere else to gamble. Home is Beijing or Shanghai, which is a 4-5 hour flight and it’s hassle free to get a visa upon arrival. Tey are arriving on our private jets, on their own private jets, commercial flights etc. We whisk them through customs, pick them up in our limousines, take them to our yacht with five state rooms, with private chefs and VIP butler service. We bought six-bedroom homes on the island and created five-star accommodation for our guests. And we have dedicated blocks in the other hotels for our visitors - that is why it’s been so successful. I can’t think of another location that can compete with the offer on this island. It is such an incredible gaming destination.
Saipan was already an amazing vacation place for the Asian market, we’ve simply added this gaming element to the island for VIP players who play in Macau, Singapore, Australia - everywhere. Te difference here is that they are flying into US territory. We follow all the US laws, the AML laws, the KYC
Imperial Pacific International Holdings Ltd, a Hong Kong based company operating as Best Sunshine International (BSI) is building an approximately $7 billion integrated casino resort in Saipan, located in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).
This mega casino resort is spread cross five phases and construction of phase 1 is currently on and expected to finish by early 2017.
Best Sunshine is the largest private infrastructure development project ever to be constructed on Saipan, the Grand Mariana Resort in phase 1 is expected to have 374 rooms across beachfront villas and hotels in addition to two casino floors. Roughly 40 percent of all tables will be VIP tables.
NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE /
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