The Playboy Mansion Macau will be part of a larger Macao Studio City complex, scheduled to open in late 2009.
The Macao Studio Complex is a $2 billion joint venture between Hong Kong’s eSun Holdings and its partners. Macao Studio City will be located next to the Lotus Bridge, which will link Macao and the Mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai. It will include a film studio, a million-square-foot shopping mall and gaming and convention facilities.
In an interview Wednesday, Playboy CEO Christie Hefner said the Mansion would feature dining, retail and entertainment venues, including gaming facilities.
"Macao has vast growing power as a travel destination, with the number of visitors expected to double between 2006 and 2011," Hefner said in an article posted on InternationalHerald.com.
Playboy profited from opening a cocktail/gaming lounge at the Palms Resort in Las Vegas in October 2006, the first Playboy Club since the original chain closed its doors in Manila in 1991.
In May, the company’s licensing division announced plans to sign a deal to open another venue by the end of the year, in either Macau or London, with the potential to increase its annual sales by as much as 25 percent.
The company chose Macao because the economy has been growing steadily since 2004, when the Sands Macau opened as the first foreign-operated casino in the region. Considered the largest casino in the world when measured by table games, the Sands was followed by Wynn Macau which opened in 2006. At that point, Macau surpassed the Las Vegas Strip in revenue produced from gambling, establishing it as the highest-volume gambling destination in the world.
Entertainment venues scheduled to open in Macau between 2007 and 2009 include The Four Seasons, MGM Grand Macau, Ponte 16, Far East Consortium Complex, the Grand Hyatt, Galaxy Cotai Megaresort, City of Dreams, Oceanus and the Mandarin Oriental. The first phase of Macau's Cotai Strip is scheduled to open in 2007 and will include 19,000 guest rooms throughout seven resort hotels with the $1.8 billion Venetian Macao as its flagship facility. Other hospitality chains that have interests in Macau include Hilton Hotels, Marriott Hotels, InterContinental Hotels and Starwood Resorts.
“The overall development of Macao is positive," said Hong Kong-based financial analyst Peter Drolet of UOB Kay Hian. "I am less bullish about the ability of demand to soak up the capacity that's coming online for both retail and hotels.”
