Visitation to Ho’s Russian casino venture doubles in Q3

Tiger de Cristal, a Russian casino project majority-owned by local gaming mogul Lawrence Ho Yau Lung’s company Summit Ascent, has seen its average daily visitation double in the past quarter, with total visitation surpassing 190,000 since the beginning of the year.
Located in the Integrated Entertainment Zone of the Primorye Region near Vladivostok, Russia, the casino resort saw its average number of daily visits expand to 1,000 from 500 between July and September of this year, according to a statement from the tourism department of the regional government last week.
The head of the tourism department, Konstantin Shestakov, noted: “The total number of visitors for this period amounted to more than 95,000 people, which is nearly the same as that for the first half of 2016”.
According to Mr. Shestakov, some 30 per cent of casino visitors are foreign tourists from Asia, in particular from Mainland China and South Korea.
The official also claimed the casino-project has brought in some RUB500 million (MOP250.4 million/US$31.3 million) in tax revenues to the Russian Government.
Shestakov credited the growth in visitation to the marketing strategies of the property’s operator, G1 Entertainment LLC, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-listed Summit Ascent Holding Ltd., chaired by Mr. Ho.

Russian hopes
According to the latest interim results of Summit Accent, the rolling chip turnover generated by the Russian casino totalled some HK$8.3 billion as at the end of August, since the casino’s official opening last November. In particular, that generated during the months of July and August amounted to HK$4.2 billion.
Tigre de Cristal is the first casino project operating in the Russian Far East integrated entertainment zone, targeting VIP customers from Northeast Asia.
The Hong Kong-based investor said in its latest interim report that the zone would be ‘an ideal location to capture the drastically underserved gaming demand from Northeast Asia,’ expecting its phase two project in the zone to commence during the second half of 2017, with the opening slated for the first half of 2019.
Three other casino investors have been granted a gaming concession in the Russian gaming zone, including Cambodian casino operator NagaCorp Ltd.
The Russian official expects the region’s tourist traffic to increase to some eight million people per year following the completion of the construction of casino resorts there.