Las Vegas Sands Corp is considering to develop a hotel-casino resort in Ho Chi Minh City, the company’s chairman and CEO, Sheldon G. Adelson, told Vietnamese media last month. “I will go to visit Vietnam, maybe at the end of July. I have met Vietnamese officials many times in Singapore. We want to build the same thing as Marina Bay Sands in Vietnam, in the south and in an urban area,” he said. However, Adelson stressed that a project in Vietnam depends on whether locals will be allowed to gamble there. “I can only do it on the condition that Vietnamese people are allowed to come in. The problem is that Vietnam does not allow its citizens to get access to the casino. We want to invest in Saigon, but we cannot do that if the government does not allow people to gamble,” he said. Vietnam only has one casino, in Hai Phong City, for foreign tourists only. The Las Vegas Sands boss explained that, according to Las Vegas Sands´ business model of integrated resorts, casinos are very important: “MICE tourism does not generate money. The same goes with spas, the park and the museum. The reason you build such facilities is that they are auxiliaries of the casino.” Previously, Adelson has also mentioned his interest in developing similar complexes in Thailand, Japan, and Taiwan, as well as Spain.
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