Stephen Weaver, the president of the Asian Region of the Las Vegas Sands Corp, said yesterday at the sideline of the DFS Galleria opening that the corporate does not have plans to cut down the number of staff members, but rather to further expand the business.

On the other hand, Mr Weaver said that the latest restrictions on the Chinese Individual Visit Scheme did not create any negative influences to their business.

“We have no plan to cut any staff. Giving our expansion plan we actually do is to give training to staff within the Venetian Macao and then transfers them to the Four Seasons Hotel,” Mr Weaver added.

“Across rationalisation,which is more what you would naturally do after a year of experience of brewing a property, you understand where you get more access, cost, bounds to reorganise.”

According to Mr Weaver, the corporate „has not experienced any huge influences“ due to the tougher issuance of the Individual Visit visas for mainland Chinese to travel to Macau.

“We believe our business model that we designed which is to attract people from a board of target audiences, and it’s not just only mainland China,“ he said.

“Plus previous survey reviewed that less than 40 percent visitors here are from mainland China, which means that our strategy of attracting from board of variety is already working, which means that we’re less affected by a change in the visa scheme than other competitors who are relying superiorly or largely on the (tourists) from mainland China,” he added.

According the Asian Region president, the business model of their corporate is designed to encourage people to have a longer stay in Macau rather than only being here to gamble.

He pointed out that it was what made Sands different from other gaming concessionairies.

In addition, Mr Weaver said that their statistics showed that the number of their visitors had increased in July over June.

DFS Galleria Macao

DFS Galleria Macao, which initially found by two American entrepreneurs, in a mode of retailing duty free products, was yesterday officially opened to the public in the Four Seasons Hotel Macao.

The managing director said that the opening is a more important concept to the DFS Limited which hopes to „integrate Macau as a whole“.
He continued that hopping the DFS Galleria could bring Macau to the international stage.

According to Stephen Weaver, the entire budget for building the Four Seasons Hotel is about USD 800 to 900 million.