Gold Moon closes Sands Cotai VIP room, Ambrose So doesn’t anticipate new trend

By
Kam Leong

Another junket operator in the city – Gold Moon Group – shut down its VIP room in Sands Cotai Central from yesterday, while four other VIP rooms of the Group remain in operation.
According to the operator’s official website, its VIP room in Sands Cotai Central had a total of 16 gaming tables and had been operational since April 2012.
Other Gold Moon VIP rooms, located in Altira, Galaxy Macau, Wynn Macau and the Landmark Hotel will continue their junket operations. These four VIP rooms have 35, 14, 12 and 9 gaming tables, respectively.
Gold Moon is the second junket operator to announce the closure of VIP rooms within a week.
David Group, one of the biggest junket promoters in Macau, announced last week that three of its seven VIP rooms, located in L’Arc, MGM Macau and Four Seasons Hotel, will shut down from January 31.
David Group said in a statement released last Saturday that it is to expand its overseas markets. According to the statement, it is to start VIP operations in the Philippines, Vietnam and South Korea this year. In addition, it plans to expand its businesses in Australia and Europe.
Despite two junket operators shutting their VIP rooms in the Special Administrative Region, SJM Holdings Chief Executive Officer Ambrose So said he did not see the closures of VIP rooms becoming a trend, Hong Kong Chinese-language newspaper Hong Kong Economic Journal reported yesterday.
“The industry would not jump on the bandwagon of closing VIP rooms.
[Closures] will depend on the financial statement of individual enterprises,” Mr. So told the newspaper.
Meanwhile, as David Group is closing its VIP room in L’Arc – one of the members of the gaming corporation – the CEO of SJM told the Chinese newspaper that such closure would only affect SJM slightly. However, he perceives that other VIP rooms of David Group would still develop stably.
Meanwhile, Mr. So conceded that he had heard VIP rooms in the city were facing operating difficulties. He indicated that it is currently very hard for both VIP rooms and casinos to attract high rollers to buy rolling chips. As such, the CEO predicted that the gaming revenues from the VIP sector will continue dropping by double digits in the first half of this year.