Month: October 2015

I’d really love to see how THIS one happened… Apparently someone somewhere, probably while sipping on vodka (there’s no way a sober man can possibly come up with this) said “Hey, you know what part of Russia needs a large casino resort? The far east, right next to North Korea”, and someone else was like “Sure, that sounds like a great idea”, and then a bunch of more people agreed to it and began constructing a casino in one of the harshest environments on the planet. This can’t possibly be the best way to do it, can it? Either way, it’s officially happening, and Vladivostok will become the host of a huge hotel and casino resort with about 800 slot machines and twice as many vodka bottles on the shelves around them.

In fairness, this isn’t the only big construction project to hit Siberia in the last couple of years. Russia has been attempting to “revitalize” the region for quite a while (which has plenty of resources, but almost no one there to take advantage of them – probably because in January the temperature falls to -18 degrees Celsius, and even in summer it never goes up to more than 20 degrees. Russia is hoping that these projects will add some positives to counterbalance the negatives of the harsh weather and remoteness of the area, offering huge visa exemptions and tax benefits to investors willing to build there.

The genius behind this construction is none other than Macau gambling tycoon Lawrence Ho (owner of casino company Summit Ascent), who has decided to invest half a billion dollars into the casino which would gradually rise up to $900 million as construction progresses. Yes, you heard right – Mr. Ho has decided to invest almost a billion dollars in constructing a casino in Siberia, of all places. Then again, maybe I’m wrong in thinking that this is a bad idea. After all, as Eric Landheer (director of corporate finance in Summit Ascent) says, there’s over 300 million people living less than a 3 hour flight away from Vladivostok, so with the right push this could attract quite a lot of attention from both Russia and China, as well as Japan and South Korea (where gambling is illegal). Attracting the Chinese market seems like a particularly wise idea – as Macau has shown us, Chinese businessmen give a whole new definition to the term “high rollers”, and now that Macau’s recent crackdowns have scared a lot of the gamblers away Russia could become their new home. The question is, would a casino be enough to warrant a vacation to one of the coldest inhabited places on the planet? I suppose it all depends on just how good the casino resort, titled “Tigre de Cristal”, will turn out to be, and also how many other notable tourist attractions will join it in the region.