Chinese gamblers flock to Siberian Tigred Crystal Casino
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Tigred Crystal Casino opened , despite several inevitable delays, and is operating smoothly with landmark businesses in the Russian Far East. Lawrence Ho (son of the Macau Gambling King and his own rights giant) is the first of many casinos to be built in the Maritime Province Unified Entertainment District (PIEZ), a few miles from Vladivostok. If the business is not successful, billions of dollars in investment could be hampered or stopped.
The Russian Far East is a sparsely populated area with only about 6 million people living in a region larger than the entire European Union. It's legendary Siberia, but hundreds of millions of potential Asian customers, as well as legitimate gambling-hungry Russians, are located within a couple of hours of flight. That's where Asia's economy is rising. The pilot casino is really looking forward to success. In their country, Chinese people can only gamble in a special administrative district called Macau – further from most Chinese population centers where the middle class is still growing.
At a time when Russia's economy was booming, travelers left the republic to travel to China for expensive vacations and shopping. But this trend has affected the value of the currency, and increasingly interdependent economies (some parts of Russia are responsible for more than 80% of foreign trade with China) are now witnessing cross-border Chinese shoppers coming for everything from food to taste of European culture.
There are as many as eight casinos planned in PIEZ, which are expected to surpass Las Vegas and even Macau when completed, now the world's two gambling masters. Work has already begun on at least three other properties in the area, one of which was set up when the government outlawed casinos . The success of gambling zones, starting with Primorsky Krai and ultimately Sochi, will depend on whether the government provides the right environment, infrastructure and support.
Despite several delays due to bureaucracy and weather, the main road to Tigre de Crystal was not ready at the time the resort opened. But those concerns are reaching their highest levels, as Yuri Trutnev, deputy prime minister and presidential envoy to the Far East Federal District, noted before the official grand opening. He talked about people getting lost on their way to the casino, where wealthy gamblers in China suggested a sea route to the casino, which the hotel had already booked for months to come and sits in the port of Murabinaya.
