LAS Vegas isn’t the only place where colossal casino resorts wage war for market supremacy. The latest battle is unfolding in Singapore.
How big is this fight? Marina Bay Sands, which cost about $5.5 billion and just had its grand opening on June 23, is the second most expensive casino property ever and has 2,560 hotel rooms spread among three towers. (Only CityCenter in Vegas, at about $8.5 billion, cost more to build.) It’s going toe-to-toe with Resorts World Sentosa, which cost about $4.4 billion and opened its casino in February. Resorts World Sentosa has four hotels (including the first designed by Michael Graves) already open, with 1,350 rooms combined. Two more hotels with 500 rooms are planned.
We visited both Singapore resorts about a month prior to Marina Bay Sands’ official grand opening. They’re staggering but don’t feel much like Vegas. Locals have to pay a hefty levy to get in. Local wives can apply to have their husbands banned from gambling. You can’t wear shorts in the casino. There aren’t any dice tables.
Marina Bay Sands’ high-roller corridor has restaurants from Japanese-born Australian sensation Tetsuya Wakuda and two Michelin-crowned chefs: Ferran Adria-hater Santi Santimaria of Spain, and Parisian pastry-lover Guy Savoy. We saw Savoy in Singapore and he raved about the bread in his restaurant. We later dipped some into his lobster consommé and understood his point. Daniel Boulud, Mario Batali and Wolfgang Puck have eateries in the fancypants mall downstairs (shopping and dining are pretty much national pastimes in Singapore). And a Pangaea nightclub, perched dramatically on a floating pavilion on Marina Bay, is forthcoming. But overall, Marina Bay Sands has a corporate feel, not surprising given its 1.3 million square feet of meeting/exhibition space.
For more of a party, there’s Resorts World Sentosa, with its Universal Studios theme park, easy beach access and lodging options including a Hard Rock and the family-friendly Festive Hotel, offering rooms that can sleep between six and eight. Resorts World Sentosa isn’t skimping on culinary talent, either, with Joel Robuchon, Susur Lee, Australia’s Scott Webster and Japan’s Kunio Tokuoka in the house. On the whole, the complex is like a higher-end Foxwoods, with twice as many kinds of table games as Marina Bay Sands.
But this high-stakes tussle is just beginning.