Plans are also underway to build a $2-billion resort on the Strip called Alon Las Vegas. Resorts World, a Malaysian hospitality and casino giant with decades of Asian gaming experience, is spending up to $4 billion for a 3,200-room property on the North Strip that will feature Chinese architecture such as an ersatz Great Wall. Meanwhile, ground was broken on another Asian-themed resort, this one much bigger than Lucky Dragon.
2, Hainan Airlines will fly the first direct flights from China to Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport (Lucky Dragon guests are confirmed to be on that flight, Jacoby said).Īlready, a record 206,743 visitors from China traveled to Las Vegas last year, nearly double the number in 2010, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. That pool of Chinese gamers will almost certainly grow. “Let them fight over the 1% and let us fight over the remaining 99%,” said Jacoby, who previously worked for Weidner’s firm, Global Gaming Asset Management, opening a casino resort in the Philippines. Lucky Dragon, though tiny compared with those properties, addresses what they see as a gap in the market: middle-class Chinese gamblers, Chinese Americans as well as the broader Asian American community. Weidner and Jacoby know major Las Vegas gaming resorts like the Sands’ Venetian, MGM or Wynn already cater to China’s high rollers with VIP parlors and relationships forged in Macau.
