Court declares bankruptcy of The 13 hotel operator

The bankruptcy of the operator of defunct The 13 hotel, located in the Seac Pai Van area in Coloane, has been declared by the Macau court.

The operations of the hyper-luxurious development envisioned by Hong Kong’s entrepreneur Stephen Hung have finally closed after a long process and several years.

The Court of First Instance officially declared the bankruptcy of the company responsible for the hotel operations management, giving all creditors until the end of March to state all debts in arrears.

The bankruptcy declaration also takes effect over the operational license of the hotel, which is due to expire this month.

The court ruling was made late last month but the decision was only published on the government’s official gazette late last week.

The bankruptcy announcement came shortly before the company behind “13 Administração Hoteleira Sociedade Unipessoal,” which owns the hotel – South Shore Holdings – was delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The company’s shares had been suspended from trading in July 2021 with a deadline in January this year to resume trading or be delisted.

It is not yet clear what the company’s total accumulated debt amount is, but it is likely to amount to several billions of patacas.

The original project, budgeted at MOP11.32 billion, started construction in 2013 but encountered several issues with financing that led to slow progress in the construction, ending only five years later.

When it finally opened in August 2018, and notwithstanding its uniqueness, the hotel did not attract much attention. With one-night-stays priced at a few dozen thousand patacas, located far from the city and even some distance away from Cotai, the hotel never managed to attract the expected clientele. In February 2020, with the first outbreak of Covid-19, the hotel finally suspended all operations. But even before that, the company tried to capitalize on the sale of some items, namely the signature fleet of specially customized Rolls-Royce vehicles.

Although several sources along the way have hinted that the hotel was intended to feature a casino operating in the venue, the notion was always denied by official authorities, who said that they had never received such a request.

A source that used to be part of the official construction and launch of the hotel told the Times that The 13 hotel does not have and never had any venue built with the purpose of hosting casino tables, denying that such an intention was ever held by the project’s creators and investors.