Harrah’s, the world’s largest casino operator, on Monday unveiled plans with US hotelier Starwood and developer Baha Mar Resorts to build a $1.6bn (\uffa3910m, \uff801.35bn) casino-resort in the Bahamas in what will be the largest resort in the Caribbean. <\/P><\/p>\n
Baha Mar, as the resort on Cable Beach in Nassau is called, would feature four hotels under Starwood’s Westin, Sheraton, W and St Regis brands; a 95,000 square foot casino under the Caesars brand plus a a 1,000-room hotel; a “village” with shopping, restaurants and entertainment venues; 20 acres of beach and pool; the Caribbean’s largest luxury spa; and a Jack Nicklaus golf course.<\/P><\/p>\n
Construction is to begin in 2007, with the opening scheduled for 2010.<\/P><\/p>\n
Baha Mar is expexted to generate $400m in wages over five years and create 5,000 jobs. <\/P><\/p>\n
The resort is a joint-venture, with Baha Mar Resorts claiming a 56.66 per cent stake; Harrah’s, 33.33 per cent; and Starwood, 10 per cent. <\/P><\/p>\n
Like many large hoteliers that are taking advantage of a booming real estate market, Starwood has been selling non-core hotel properties to focus more on management. But its equity stake in Baha Mar reflects a push from developers for hotel operators to have a more vested interest in new properties.<\/P><\/p>\n
Harrah’s first venture in the Caribbean ties in with its strategy to use the upscale Caesars brand to expand globally. Harrah’s, which acquired Caesars Entertainment for $9bn this summer, is part of pack of operators keen to build casinos in Singapore. <\/P><\/p>\n
Strong business at Sands Macao, the first foreign casino to open on the former Portuguese enclave, has whetted appetite to gain a foothold in the burgeoning Asian casino market.<\/P><\/p>\n
By Amy Yee in New York
\nSource: Financial Times<\/SMALL><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Plans for a huge resort here, including a Caesars hotel and casino and four Starwood hotels, were unveiled today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}