The hotel’s 1,500 rooms would make it one of the largest in the country when it opens in 2027.
(Bloomberg) — Chinese tourists and loyal customers to Wynn Resorts Ltd. will be key to filling rooms at its new gaming resort in the United Arab Emirates, according to local officials.
Both segments are expected to be important drivers of business at the planned $3.9 billion, 1,500-room resort, which would be one of the largest hotels in the country on its planned opening in 2027 in the emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, about an hour north of Dubai.
“China has never been a big focus of ours,” Raki Phillips, chief executive officer of the Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority, said in an interview Monday at the Arabian Travel Market convention in Dubai. “It is a big focus of ours right now.”
The Las Vegas company plans to build a gaming resort, although the UAE hasn’t passed legislation yet that would legalize gambling. The gaming area is expected to take up 4% of the 5.6 million-square-foot space, which would make it about 15% larger than the 194,000 square feet of casino space at the Wynn and Encore Las Vegas.
Phillips declined to comment on the status of legislation or whether casino gambling was coming to the emirate. The authority last year set up a unit to regulate so-called “integrated resorts,” which could include gaming facilities.
Another important customer base will be repeat Wynn clients, said Alison Grinnell, chief executive officer of RAK Hospitality Holding, a government entity that’s one of the investors in Wynn’s UAE resort that will be known as Wynn Al Marjan Island.
“Wynn have a very loyal following,” she said. “They don’t have a huge number of resorts around the world. They have a very, very select few and they’re very conscious and put a lot of thought and effort as to where they put those resorts.”
Wynn Al Marjan Island — along with the overall growth in tourism in the region — has generated a burst of interest from “every brand that you can imagine,” said Phillips, when asked about interest from other casino operators.
The issue about whether to legalize casinos is just one of a number of changes potentially coming to a region that’s been easing rules around social behavior such as allowing non-married couples to live together. In Saudi Arabia, it’s still an open question about whether it will allow alcohol in hotels.
In at least one recent case, one Gulf government backtracked on a promise: Qatar abruptly banned sales of alcohol in the stands of the World Cup just as the tournament was set to begin.
“I can’t comment on what’s happening, what happened in, in other, other countries,” Phillips said. “But what can I say is for probably more than two decades the UAE has been a safe and prosperous place to put investments, whether it’s hotels, whether it’s into attractions, and whether it’s into infrastructure.”
Wynn’s Ras Al Khaimah resort may encourage other operators to work with authorities in the emirate on casino ventures, Grinnell said.
“There will be other resorts that we can look at, both within Ras Al Khaimah and that are being looked at elsewhere, that may come and work with us to say, ‘We want to do an integrated resort,’” she said, using the industry term for a hotel that includes gambling. “It may or it may not have gaming.”
She said the word “gaming” is used instead of “gambling” because the latter is pejorative. “Gambling is not a word that is used in the industry,” she said. It’s a word with “a very negative connotation.”
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