Melco Crown “likely” to drop apartment hotel in City of Dreams: Lawrence Ho

It is “likely” that Melco Crown will drop its plans to build an apartment hotel in City of Dreams resort, according to the company’s chief executive officer, Lawrence Ho. “More likely than not it is going to be just a hotel tower,” Mr Ho told Macau Business in an exclusive interview published in this month’s issue. “Probably next year we will consider what to build,” he added. Commenting on the opening of The House of Dancing Water, Mr Ho stressed it “has already been paying off in terms of generating a ‘desire’ effect”. “We are seeing a lot of the intangible effects, with people coming to City of Dreams and staying here.” Mr Ho also stressed that Melco Crown has fulfilled its commitments so far and, therefore, the company hopes “to have the opportunity, in due course, subject to the government’s pace, to further develop in Macau”. Stressing that Melco Crown has no plans to extend its casino operations to the Macau peninsula, Mr Ho hopes that “Galaxy Macau’s opening will further drive the centre of gravity to Cotai.” He also stressed that Melco Crown is still interested in operating a casino in Macao Studio City, as soon as the two shareholders of the project solve their conflicts. Eventually, if they decide to sell, Melco Crown would be interested, Mr Ho admitted. Talking about Melco Crown’s operations, he stressed that the company still has “a long way to go but we have our targets in place”, being to increase cash flow and earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization. “The key for us is to grow on slot machines and on the mass market at City of Dreams because we have committed so much capital to this property. If you look at our return on capital, it is inferior to that of our competitors. Our goal is very clear: we need to grow this segment of the business.”