Imperial Pacific vows to complete Saipan project
Imperial Pacific International executives have stated they are fully committed to complete the casino resort on the Pacific island of Saipan.
Saipan.- Senior vice president of operations for Imperial Pacific International Holdings Ltd (IPI) Lu Hou Tsai has stated that the company is fully committed to complete the permanent casino resort projected for the Pacific island of Saipan. The executive said that the company is working “diligently to get the hotel up” and assured that once it gets built it will “further assist [IPI] in increasing our cash flow.”
“It’s not conducive to business when you have customers staying at ‘this hotel, that hotel’”, Mr Tsai said to GGRAsia and noted the need to get their own hotel up to get gamblers in IPI’s casino. The venue opened on July 6th, 2017 after facing several hurdles, such as questions over its safety.
“Right now, we have over 1,000 construction workers on site, and our construction company is a U.S.-based construction company,” Mr Tsai added regarding the controversy over previous contractors using imported labour with didn’t comply with local regulations.
As the gambling facility opened its doors, construction workers decided to launch protests against the operator as they said that they weren’t getting paid in time. Richard Huang, gaming analyst at Nomura, said at the time: “It’s definitely a big deal because they had very little operating assets before opening this property,” considering that the opening takes a high-growth, as Financial Times said.
Nonetheless, in its annual report, IPI said that as of December 31, 2017, it had invested “approximately US$650 million in the design, consulting, engineering, construction materials and labour costs” for the Saipan resort. Said investment, executives hope, will start to give further profit once the hotel gets opened.
