Hotel guests are seen at the infinity pool at the SkyPark atop Marina Bay Sands in Singapore
Tourists wanting to float in an infinity pool 57 stories in the sky are paying the most ever to stay at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands. The hotel’s owner would rather they spend their holiday at a roulette table downstairs.
Even as room rates at Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s Singapore resort surged to a record USD468 a night last quarter, more than double the average in the city-state, earnings declined. The taste for luxury accommodation didn’t extend to the casino floor, where high-stakes gaming revenue slumped 34 percent from a year earlier.
“We didn’t come here for the casino,” German tourist Raik Wernicke said last week as he and his family waited for a bus to take them from Marina Bay Sands to Singapore’s zoo. “We booked this hotel because of the infinity pool at the sky deck that offers a magnificent view of the city. This is our first visit to Singapore so we’re seeing the sights, enjoying the food and doing some shopping.”
More European, Canadian and South Korean tourists aren’t offsetting a slump in visitors from China, whose citizens are estimated to account for half of the city-state’s VIP gambling. Singapore’s woes are mirrored in Macau, where casino spending plunged in October by the most since at least 2005 as China’s campaign against corruption prompted gamblers to cut back on lavish spending.
Singapore tourist arrivals fell 3.3 percent to 10.3 million in the eight months through August from a year earlier, according to data from the tourism board. Shares of Las Vegas Sands, controlled by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, fell 24 percent this year through Tuesday, while Genting Singapore Plc, which operates the Southeast Asian city’s other casino, fell 29 percent to lead declines on the benchmark Straits Times Index.
Genting slumped 2.8 percent at the close in Singapore yesterday, its biggest decline in seven weeks. Shares are falling as the drop in Marina Bay Sands’s revenue from high rollers, along with the plunge in Macau’s gaming revenue last month, highlight the weakening casino business, said Carey Wong, an analyst at OCBC Investment Research in Singapore.
Lonely Planet named Singapore its top country destination for 2015, citing the “boat-shaped” Marina Bay Sands complex as a drawcard.
Even with the hotel almost full, Marina Bay Sands posted adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of $351.7 million last quarter, a 5.9 percent drop from a year earlier.
“They’re probably not getting big casino spenders into their hotels these days,” Alan Richardson, an investment manager at Samsung Asset Management Co. in Hong Kong. “The gaming revenue normally comes from Chinese tourists and we have seen a decline in visitors from China.”
Travelers from the world’s most populous nation, Singapore’s biggest source of tourists after Indonesia, plunged 29 percent in the eight months through August, according to official data. President Xi Jinping is cracking down on corruption and spending by officials, while the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines’s plane bound for Beijing in March spurred Chinese holidaymakers to choose destinations other than Southeast Asia. Jonathan Burgos, Bloomberg
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