MGM Cotai Grand Opening Pushed Back Due To Technical Checks

The $3 billion MGM Cotai casino resort in Macau was scheduled to open on January 29, 2018. Chief Executive Officer of MGM China Grant Bowie announced this week that MGM Cotai will not open in Jan as the company was still in the process of carrying out some technical checks. The opening has been pushed back for two weeks and an official date will be confirmed shortly.

However MGM Cotai will still have a soft launch on Jan 29 but all of the facilities will not be open to the public. A grand opening will take place in the month of February and all facilities are expected to be up and running at this point of time. This is not the first time that MGM Cotai has had to push back its opening date.

The original opening was set for the fourth quarter of 2017 but that had to be pushed back after Macau was hit Typhoon Hato in August 2017 and caused immense destruction to the peninsula.

MGM Cotai did incur some damage due to Typhoon Hato and construction work was hampered for some time. The casino resort also suffered a fire in September 2017 and once again construction work was impacted.

THEMGMMACAU

MGM Cotai wants to make sure it has all of its facilities up and running before the Chinese New Year, which starts on February 16. This is the biggest festival in China and Macau’s casinos tend to do brisk business during this two week-long festival which ends on March 4. Millions of Chinese tourists will make their way over to Macau and spend money on gaming and non-gaming activities at the casino.

Since MGM Cotai will be the newest casino to open in Macau, it is bound to attract a steady stream of Chinese tourists who want to check out the $3 billion facility and what it has to offer. Bowie stated that MGM Cotai was currently implementing some high level technology at the casino resort but did not go into details to disclose what type of technology was being implemented.

MGM Cotai is still waiting on approval for the number of gaming tables the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau will sanction. The property can accommodate up to 500 live dealer tables.

In a statement, Bowie said

On gaming tables, we are still waiting for the government to give us our final award. We think we have provided all the information needed, and now we are waiting for the government to respond