Insights into opening a 3000, all-suites Hotel in Macau, SAR, China

On consideration of the scale of the task the Venetian Macau Casino Resort called on Lycette & Associates’ reputation and resources to provide Rooms Division consulting services and undertake the initial training of all Housekeeping Supervisors and Room Attendants for their new, 3000 all-suite property in Macau.

L&A senior consultants and a team of L&A’s Chinese speaking local trainers worked with the hotel management and to a very tight programme to ensure that the housekeeping department was ready and well prepared for the opening of this unique property on August 28, 2007.

Each L&A trainer was given a group of raw recruits from Mainland China and in 2 weeks successfully turned them into fully fledged 5 star Room Attendants.

Four months after the opening, L&A had continued its involvement with this hotel of “Superlatives” with L&A Supervisors working as Floor Supervisors and Trainers supporting the 1000+ Housekeeping team. All rooms in the hotel are at least 70m² with either 2 queen size beds or a king size bed and each supervisor takes care of all 102 rooms on each floor. Room Attendants clean 10 suites each during their shift. There are 32 guest room floors in the Hotel tower and with each corridor nearly 500metres long there is a lot of walking to be done every day!

More facts and figures about the Venetian Hotel and casino complex include:

• The complex is the largest building in Asia and the 2nd largest building in the world.
• There are currently over 15,000 staff at the complex and this is rising daily. The Venetian workforce accounts for 1 in 20 of all of Macau’s workers.
• The exhibition centre is a huge 131,000m² and has the largest pillar-less ballroom in Asia. A 5 course meal is able to be served to 15,000 guests in the Ballroom at any one time and there is a 15,000 seat stadium in the complex.
• At 51,000m² The Venetian casino floor is the biggest in the world and within the complex are 9 hectares of retail space with over 350 shops and more than 30 restaurants.
• After only 17 days of operation the 1,000,000th visitor passed through the front doors of the complex. There are now up to 75,000 visitors per day.
• The Venetian Hotel accounts for 52% of Macau’s power consumption
• With the opening of the Venetian, Macau’s Hotel room inventory increased by 25%.

The future looks very bright for Macau with casino revenue already exceeding that of Las Vegas. Visitors to Macau jumped from 9 million per annum in 1999 to 26 million per annum in 2007.

There are an additional 14 hotels being planned for the Cotai strip and a total of 20,000 hotel rooms are due to open over the next 3 years including; Fairmont Raffles, Shangri-La, Hilton, St Regis, Sheraton, Marriott, Conrad and Four Seasons.