Melco Resorts will launch its new luxury hotel Morpheus at City of Dreams today.
The US$1 billion hotel, designed by the late Zaha Hadid, has been described by Melco Resorts Chairman and CEO Lawrence Ho as the company’s “masterpiece” and is positioned to target the lucrative premium mass segment.
According to reports, it is expected that Melco will transfer up to 40 gaming tables from its existing City of Dreams table allocation while it awaits a decision from local gaming regulator, the DICJ, on new gaming table allocations in 2019.
Speaking about Morpheus during a recent earnings call, Ho said, “Morpheus is more than just another building. It is an architectural masterpiece and will become a tourist attraction in Macau – an icon for quality, taste and vision.
“It embodies our commitment to supporting Macau’s ongoing transformation into a diversified world tourism and leisure destination. Just as critically, it exemplifies our unique ability to imagine and deliver world’s first projects that redefine and elevate the landscapes they share.
“The reality is few, if any, other operators are doing this – certainly not on the same scale. This is a fundamental competitive advantage. Our successful execution of large projects like Morpheus goes beyond the operations of a single property. For all the current and future governments and partners with whom we collaborate, they validate our commitment to holistic and original development, made specifically for each location.
“For our customers, they reaffirm our focus on quality and on creating from their perspective – for the experience they want, not what we can most easily implement. This is why we have been able to build a global integrated resort network, literally from the ground up, within a few years. And it is why we have the opportunity to own the future of our space.”
Alongside the launch of Morpheus today, Melco will also officially rebrand The Countdown Hotel – formerly known as Crown Hotel – to Libertine.
The rebranding is part of a comprehensive makeover of the entire City of Dreams property, with Ho revealing last month that the new City of Dreams will feature an innovative “pop-up” retail space in which stores can be mixed and matched at will.
“We have reinvented retail,” Ho said. “For the first time ever we will be creating our own shopping environment, inviting some of the coolest brands in the world in a 1,500 square meter space that we will be running ourselves as a pop-up.
“It will be a totally different take on the retail proposition.”
