Vietnam Eyes Macau Style Casinos

Foreign investors are vying to build Macau-style luxury gambling and hotel complexes in a beachside resort area close to Vietnam’s buzzing southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City.

US-based Winvest Investment LLC is now clearing land for the five-star Saigon Atlantis hotel and casino complex after winning in-principle government approval, said the top investment official of Ba Ria Vung Tau province.

Another luxury project, the Ho Tram Strip which Canada-based developers Asian Coast Development Ltd plan to start building later this year, would feature five themed casinos and a Greg Norman-designed golf course.

The work of Las Vegas-based architect Paul Steelman, who also designed the Sands Macao, it would feature “lavish Vegas-style gaming rooms” and offer a secluded “alternative to Macau,” a Hong Kong based spokesperson said.

Under Vietnam’s current laws which ban gambling, the resorts would cater to foreign tourists, the only people now allowed to gamble in Vietnam’s sole official casino in the northern port city of Haiphong.

For now, neither complex has received final government approval, said Le Kim Huong, head of the Ba Ria Vung Tau provincial investment and planning department.

“The province had proposed the establishment of some casino for tourism development, but it’s up to the government to decide,” she said.

The $300m Saigon Atlantis project, to be built over five years, would include a luxury hotel, villas, a golf course, shopping centres and an entertainment park, according to state-controlled media.

Huong said Vietnam’s communist government had “agreed in principle” to the project at Cua Lap outside Vung Tau city, and the development was now “in the process of land clearance and compensation.

“Construction can only start late this year or early next year at the earliest,” she told AFP.

The $500m Ho Tram Strip, to be situated on beachfront east of Vung Tau, had not yet received final approval from the government, she said.

The Hong Kong spokesperson said construction of the first phase of the project, including a five-star 1 100-room hotel, a casino and a PGA Tour-class golf course, was scheduled to start in the second half of this year.

The Las Vegas-style casino would include hundreds of slot machines and a wide variety of table games, as well as an arts and entertainment complex, 10 restaurants, and a very large swimming pool.

Originally posted 2007-04-13 15:13:30. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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