Roosevelt Macau drops casino idea, focuses on fine dining

The Macau Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel – one more property to add to Macau’s casino resort and hotel cluster – will not feature a gambling area on the premises, as owners have decided to play to their strengths of providing star-rating hospitality and gourmet restaurants, revealed hotel representative, Mr Aaron Iu, yesterday.
On the sidelines of the hotel’s exterior design competition awards ceremony, Mr Iu told the Times that “[there are no plans to have] a casino within the hotel and we haven’t considered applying for gambling tables in the future either.”
“There are already big casinos nearby such as the Venetian Macao… we can’t compete with that by running a casino… the scale of our hotel cannot compare with them, but we are a five-star hotel with exquisite fine-dinning facilities, so we will take a different direction and hope to keep our guests satisfied with delicacies,” he explained.
In a construction area of over 28,000 square meters, the 12-storey Roosevelt Macau will offer 373 guest rooms with balconies overlooking the sea and the neighboring Macau Jockey Club’s racing court. According to a previous design plan, it had also reserved a gaming area of over 5,000 square meters for the ground floor.
Mr Iu told media that construction is underway and the hotel is scheduled to open in the second quarter of next year. The hotel aims to resemble the iconic Roosevelt’s Hollywood heritage, but with a modern touch. Moreover, the hotel representative said Macau’s local features and cultural motifs would also be incorporated into the project.
“The first Roosevelt Hotel is filled with its local traditions of Hollywood, that’s why when we plan the Roosevelt Macau, we will also fill it with the local artifacts of Macau, as a combination of the West and the East to show to the world,” he said.
To complement the hotel’s original overall exterior design, the operator has organized a competition inviting talented locals to create solutions that define certain exterior areas of the future hotel. Amongst 35 entries submitted in the past three months, the competition selected a winning solution titled “The Era” to be created and awarded five other creative designs.
Decorating the hotel exterior with LED fins and 3D printed foam depicting legendary Hollywood stars, the winning design was, according to the winner, Kenny Leong, an attempt “to transform the hotel into an entertainment destination by revitalizing the glamour of the Golden Age of Hollywood through extraordinary performances and exciting interactive media.”
The young designer explained that he based the solution on three research points: the Roosevelt’s history and events; the target demographic for the Macau project; as well as budget or design problems that might be encountered during a design competition like this.
“We chose a local designer as we believe that it is Macau people who really know about Macau’s characteristics. Roosevelt Macau as a local hotel will be a place that blends Chinese and Western cultures, like the city itself,” explained Aaron Iu.

MGTO strives to attract international tourists

MGTO predicts that the month of July will record a “much more positive result” than June in terms of visitor volumes. Amid the noticeable decline of Chinese tourists this year, the government has been trying to attract international visitors, especially those from Southeast Asian markets. The bureau director, Helena de Senna Fernandes, told media yesterday that the city is pushing out new campaigns with local ferry operators and regional airlines in order to bring in more visitors, including those that cannot fly directly but can transfer flights through Hong Kong or other regional hubs. Besides consolidating sources of tourists from Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, Ms Fernandes said the MGTO would aggressively explore the Indian and Indonesian markets, which currently lack direct flights to Macau.