The casino, which cost over US$2 million, is the 30th such facility constructed internationally by the Princess Group and reflects the full Las Vegas style. The facility has 300 slot machines and 11 gaming tables (2 roulette tables, 7 card games – blackjack and poker and 2 Texas Holdem).
At a press conference yesterday to launch the facility, Director of Operations for Princess Casinos in the Americas Oguz Tayanc emphasised that the establishment would be run within the confines of the law, permitting only guests of the hotel and foreigners to use it.
He said that a record would be taken of every person who entered the casino, and foreigners would only be allowed inside the facility if they could confirm their nationality. Tayanc also promised top-notch security and said that each person would be screened for weapons before being allowed entry into the casino. He also disclosed to this newspaper that inside the facility there were 270 cameras.
Asked as to what would be done to ensure there was a big enough clientele, Tayanc responded that the Princess brand was particularly strong in Latin America and the Caribbean and that it intended to use this to its advantage. He said they were arranging special packages to allow visitors to the hotels for weekends and holidays and would be promoting the country’s eco-tourism. “Guyana doesn’t have too much to offer actually, to be honest with you, beside eco-tourism… we will try to close this gap with this casino,” he said. Stabroek News understands that plans are also on stream to have special weekend hotel packages for Guyanese so that locals interested in playing in the casino would be able to fulfil the legal requirement of being a customer of the hotel.
Tayanc disclosed that within the next two weeks customers were expected to come from Brazil, and it was anticipated that arrangements would be put in place to have flights twice weekly from there. He also disclosed that there would be persons coming from Canada and the USA specifically to play in the casino. The casino also hopes to benefit from a number of upcoming sporting events, including the ICC Twenty/20 World Cup, and regional rugby, karate and power-lifting tournaments which will be hosted in Guyana.
Further, Tayanc said that plans were still on board to have the local casino be a satellite casino for the World Poker tournament which is slated for June of this year. He said that from May/June of this year it was expected to have satellite tournaments in the casino.
The casino is not a 24-hour facility as yet, and will only be open from midday to 4 am. As for the spending practices of customers, Tayanc said that the patrons of the hotel would not be allowed any credit. Asked if there was a limit to how much a customer could spend, he replied there was no definitive limit but that the casino’s management would carefully monitor each customer because the management was very much against money-laundering.
Further, the casino’s management is promising live entertainment to its patrons. A special troupe of dancers from Russia was brought in for yesterday’s opening. Tayanc said that local Guyanese entertainers would be invited to perform. Stabroek News was told that local entertainers would have to sign special contracts which would allow them to be considered as employees of the hotel, thereby ensuring that the law was not broken.
The Director of Operations further said that the casino had created 130 jobs for local persons and that in the next two months, this number would increase to 160. He said once the entertainment centre of the hotel became operational the number of local jobs would increase to 200.
Asked about hopes for the casino, Tayanc said that since this was the first of its kind in the country it would be difficult to make any projections, but if the investment was recovered in five years’ time that would mean it was a “good one.” If they recovered the total investment in the hotel and casino within seven years, he noted, that would be excellent.
Traditionally once the Princess Group recovered its investment in a country, it reinvested in that country, Tayanc said. Asked what this meant in the context of Guyana, he said it meant the possibility of another hotel being established in the country.
The Turkish hotel group Princess Group has hotels in 14 different countries. The Group purchased the Buddy’s International Hotel in 2008 at a price of US$15 million. The hotel had been developed in time for the 2007 World Cup Cricket at a total cost of US$12 million by local businessman Omprakash ‘Buddy’ Shivraj, who had taken several mortgages from the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) and benefited from a $165.7 million advance on the sale of rooms to the government.
