Cotai Strip Resorts, Macau, China

4BradJill 5:00 PM Feb 12, 2020

A ghost town due to the Coronavirus Outbreak
The Cotai Strip is Macau's answer to the Strip in Las Vegas. It has grown fast over the last 10-12 years and continues to do so with the recent opening of Macau's LRT Line as well as more and more new restaurants. Plus, there are more properties, planned entertainment attractions and yes more restaurants coming over the next 2-3 years. Sadly however, the Cotai Strip has been rocked by the Coronavirus Outbreak which has forced the Macau Government to place high restrictions on border crossings and to shut down casinos and other entertainment venues around the city. This has hit the Cotai Strip particularly hard, so much that hotel occupancy is reportedly only 15% at the major hotels that have decided to remain open. A handful like Conrad, St. Regis and Four Seasons have decided to close temporarily. Who would have thought that ever possible. Most restaurants, entertainment venues and shops in the major hotels are also closed. Hotel shuttles have stopped as well. As such, the properties are bare, quiet and empty of visitors at the moment. Presently, if you walk along the Cotai Strip, you may have it all to yourself, a scene that will not likely be repeated ever again once Macau loosens the restrictions on visitors from mainland China, welcoming them back into Macau and allows the casinos to reopen. But when will this happen? It is an eerie sight seeing an entire Strip shut down like this.

4BradJill 5:00 PM Apr 6, 2018

Cotai Strip - The Gaps Are Being Filled!
It has been interesting watching the gaps in space fill up the Cotai Strip over the past 10 years. No longer does the Venetian Macao stick out like a lone pillar amongst an empty skyline. With the addition of numerous other mega-properties, the Cotai Strip is now resembling the famous Strip in Las Vegas. In the past few years, several major hotel-casinos have popped up along the Strip, providing numerous hotel rooms, new restaurants, casinos and entertainment for guests to enjoy. Studio City and Parisian opened up a couple years ago and really helped extend the Strip beyond Four Seasons. Studio City gave us an interesting facade embedded ferris wheel while the Parisian's Eiffel Tower gives the Strip its first mega structure like what you can find in Vegas. Then came along Wynn Palace with its Bellagio like Performance Lake as well as a cable car ride. Yes, that's right, a good and proper cable car ride that circles the lake. Nice! Steve brought over some important pieces of his art collection from Vegas with the opening of the Wynn Palace as well. Now, MGM Cotai has opened across the street from Wynn Palace with its cleverly designed stack-of-blocks like building and its impressive atrium experience called the Spectacle. In future effort to bring Vegas to Cotai, the Janice Wong MGM has opened with a chocolate fountain that very much reminds one of the similar attraction at Bellagio. Up next will be City of Dream's much anticipated Morpheus (mid 2018), which will be the world's first exoskeleton high rise building. This futuristically designed building is very impressive from the outside and we are all eager to get inside to see what the interior later this year. The future Alain Ducasse restaurants that are being touted for Morpheus have many licking their lips in anticipation as well. Beyond the MGM Cotai and Wynn Palace, you can see the future of the Cotai Strip area in the Grand Lisboa Palace (late 2019), which is under construction but starting to take recognisable shape and form. The long delayed opening of The Thirteen at the far end of what could be considered the Cotai Strip, nearer to Coloane Village should finally make its grand opening in the next few months as well. Further down the line, Galaxy Phase III and IV will begin in 2019 and there is a round of hotel rebranding and modifications that seem to be in the pipeline for the next couple of years as well. Look for the Cotai Strip to continue to expand, develop and evolve in coming years! It is already unrecognisable compared to just 5 years ago! Let's see what the next five years bring as well.