Charif Abdellatif, President of Macao Casino in Quito

“We are bringing a new casino concept to Ecuador”

2010-04-28
Reading time 1:59 min

New Macao Casino in Ecuador is about to be opened in a couple of months. Tell me about the project.
A couple of years ago, while I was doing business in Ecuador, I had the possibility of buying a hotel casino in Quito. I began working on a big renovation of the whole place. Quito is a micro-market, but it is a very good market. I saw the different casinos in the city -some of them were good and some not so- and I thought that, with my experience, I could bring something new with this project. So the idea was to build this new place, called Macao Casino. It is a thematic casino with all the Asian atmosphere, a tematic gaming hall. This is a different concept, helped with the fact that there’s a big chinese population that enjoy gambling. There’s nothing like this in Quito.

We can say it’s a first-class casino
Yes, a first-class casino but adapted to the market. It’s not a huge structure. It’s a small casino with eleven tables, 120 slots and we’ll incorporate poker. For the future, we’ll certainly make an ampliation.
An important point is that we will have a Texas Hold’em area in this casino, as I believe a lot in this game. I co-manage in Paris the biggest poker club in Europe, where we held some of the biggest poker events like the WPT.
The idea is to bring that to Quito, with a great poker room and tournaments. This will be something new for Quito. Sometimes, operators don’t want to bring poker as they prefer to install slots or roulette tables. But I love poker, I have big hopes on it and I also think that it will create traffic to the casino. We have a lot of connections in the poker, and I guess we can be pioneers in this industry in Ecuador.

When are you planning to open the casino?
We are planning to open the casino in three months approximately. I think this casino will revolutionize this market because I want to give more to the players. We are thinking on big sourprises for them.
In terms of technology, we’ll work with TITO, and Argentine firm ElectroChance will work with us in the Player Tracking System.

Talking about providers, how did your relation with Foster Casino Supplier begin? How are they involved in the project?
They are a very important part of this project, and their idea of working with them was very clear and simple from the beginning. Due to their 15 years experience in this industry, they know everything about the gaming hall atmosphere. That’s why I decided to do everything with them, the whole concept and the design of the casino. For me was much more easier to work in everyting with only one company. I guess this is the first time that Foster designs a casino from A to Z, but I’m sure it will not be the last one.

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