Sheldon Adelson has yet to start building in Madrid and already a potential rival has sprung up in Barcelona, the city he turned down for EuroVegas. It will be on an equally grand scale. And one of his Macau competitors, Melco Crown Entertainment, is negotiating to manage the gaming side.
BCN World plans to break ground this year on a US$6 billion, six-casino resort complex outside Barcelona with 18,000 hotel rooms envisioned at full build-out and an array of leisure attractions spread across 1,500 acres. The first phase of Barcelona World, as it’s called, will feature 1,100 hotel rooms operated by Meliá and is slated to open in 2016.
Barcelona is the city Las Vegas Sands rejected in favor of Madrid for its equally grandiose EuroVegas, a $30 billion complex of 12 resort hotels with six casinos, convention facilities, golf courses, shopping malls and other attractions scheduled to open in phases beginning in 2017.
“Megaresorts are nothing new except in Europe,” said Ivar Yuste, a partner at Madrid-based consulting firm PHG Hotels & Resorts. “The idea is to create a destination where there is nothing and where land is cheap. BCN World is in a great location. Disney was considering that same area in the region of Catalonia for its European theme park before deciding on Paris.”
Partners in BCN World along with Meliá include Spanish investment group Veremonte, upscale shopping developer Value Retail and Melco Crown, which is working with Veremonte on an agreement to manage the casino portion.
“BCN World is primarily aimed at the Chinese, Russian and Latin American markets, followed by Europe, which of course includes Spain,” said Meliá’s Senior Vice President of Business Development Jose Dalmau. “We are very focused on the potential in the Chinese market, given the fact that the Chinese have shown great enthusiasm for similar casino-hotel projects in other parts of the world.”
LVS officially registered plans for EuroVegas last month, but the project is on hold while the central government works to win support for a controversial exemption to Spain’s ban on indoor smoking.
