Sands Macao Resorts: Accessibility, ESG and Well-being Programmes On Site!
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9th Mar, 2025
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The Las Vegas Sands Corporation, the third-largest casino company worldwide by revenue, has invested heavily in properties and hotels in Macau with the capacity to organise various major events for corporate and international organisations. The company owns several resorts in Asia, including Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, and through its majority-owned subsidiary Sands China Ltd., it manages several properties in Macau, including Sands Macao, The Plaza Macao, The Londoner, The Venetian and The Parisian.
The latter three fit perfectly into the iconic Sands lifestyle, serving as an integrated campus for major events and international entourages. The Venetian is the largest and the anchor property on the Cotai complex, the Parisian has a charming French feel, and the newest Londoner, opened after COVID, has received several conversions with a British touch. The Sands Convention Centre, within the Venetian complex, has a total of 1.6 million square metres of event space - the largest resort convention centre in Macau but also in Southeast Asia. In our six exhibition halls and our huge ballroom inside the Convention Centre, we do a lot of trade fair business.
Stephanie Tanpure - the guest of our interview - joined Sands China in 2010 and has played a key role in building the global presence of the Sands Resorts Macao brand. As part of Asia's largest integrated resorts, with approximately 10,500 hotel rooms, she leads a sales team of 80 people in Macau, Hong Kong and 12 regional offices in Greater China, Asia-Pacific, the UK, Europe and the USA, as Vice President of Sales. HQ spoke to her about these ‘three children’...
What can you tell me about what's new in your property complex?
One of the most exciting openings of recent times has been the Cotai Arena, within the confines of the Venetian, our largest multi-purpose entertainment and convention venue with a capacity of up to 15,000 people. It can host major shows and sporting events, but also large congresses, which more recently have been in great demand for corporate events. This was part of a complete, state-of-the-art transformation of our venue portfolio to recreate the most innovative and technological multifunctional corporate and entertainment space in Asia. As far as upcoming shows and concerts are concerned, I don't think you'll find an arena of this calibre in our part of the world.
The Venetian features six exhibition halls and a huge ballroom inside the Convention Centre, where we host many trade fair deals. The Parisian is connected to the Venetian and also has meeting spaces - it doesn't have an exhibition centre, but it is connected to the Venetian's exhibition centre. For its part, the Londoner is also linked by the sky bridge. All three of these large integrated resorts add up to nine interconnected hotels with approximately 10,000 hotel rooms. There are various occupancy models: we can have a group of 30 people in one of our high-end properties up to full occupancy with potentially 10,000, 11,000 people.
So, can a guest stay at the Parisian and benefit from the Venetian's leisure options?
They definitely can. The biggest and most unique selling point of the Sands Lifestyle Resorts is the integration of services throughout the property. If you're an event organiser, you can host your guests or keynote speakers at the Londoner, while setting up the event structure at the Venetian. You can divide different regional delegations into different resorts, or even divide the public among the nine hotels in this resort city. Everyone can visit the properties, have access to the food and catering, leisure facilities, shopping and entertainment, all under one roof. From an organiser's perspective, when planning a convention here, you only need one point of contact. Imagine an exhibition centre linked to nine hotels under the same ownership, a single contract and a service team operating the event within the same property. You can change the views, the programme from one space to another or even organise a smaller meeting in another hotel. In fact, you can even use this offer for incentive programmes. This multiplicity of options and functions is quite easy to get, but the possibility of using all the different facilities makes participants feel that they have had a very unusual and diverse experience.
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The Londoner Casino and Resort
The Venetian Macao was the first resort to be built on the Cotai Strip in 2007. Later, two of the group's other properties - The Parisian Macao and The Londoner Macao - were integrated into the complex, leading to the creation of a resort town with interconnected European themes and allusions. Being such an active and vibrant brand on the Asian continent, how are you positioning yourselves on the European market?
That's a good question because, before we opened Londoner, our European office was very interested in what this property was and how it would replicate London. Although they have obvious intersections, we prefer to approach these properties from an experiential point of view rather than emphasising their geographical themes. The experiences we create take on the different personalities of our resorts rather than being false recreations of the cities. We really want to position ourselves as a lifestyle property capable of creating experiences that have British, French and European inspiration. For example, at the Londoner resort, we worked with some famous architects, but also with David Beckham as our Sands brand ambassador. He collaborated with the interior design company, David Collins Studio, to co-design and sign 14 of our high-end suites. Of course, you can find the Big Ben in front of the Londoner façade, but we prefer to emphasise our partnerships with British brands. Much of Londoner's retail is British, and our latest gastropub and steakhouse has also been signed by Gordon Ramsay. So, we've tried to keep everything very authentic, rather than sticking with tacky, superficial London themes.
Within your strategic planning, what other critical changes have you seen emerge from the pandemic? How has Macau's momentum and vitality shaped your group's business recovery?
Our business mix is very skewed towards Asia and mainland China. The bad news is that, unfortunately, our region has been locked for a significantly longer period of time than the rest of the world. We are connected by land to China, so we were subject to three years of lockdown as a Special Administrative Region. In comparison, the business recovery in Macau is approximately two years behind that of Singapore. If we go back to 2017/2018, our occupancies in the convention and exhibition sector were 50 per cent mainland Chinese and 50% international. So this period from 2024 to 2025 is very exciting for us now. We have started to see our first international tourists and also our international venue inspections for large congresses returning in 2024. Our main market, mainland China, recovered almost overnight as soon as the borders were opened. On the other hand, the Macau government is actively encouraging sports tourism with events such as the 2024 Macau Grand Prix, a Formula Regional car race held on the streets of Macau in November 2024. It is also encouraging all integrated resorts in Macau to bring international exhibitions and conventions to the region. To further aid our recovery from COVID-19, we have also launched a multi-year partnership with the NBA to hold some pre-season games in Macau and help diversify our international strategy.
Sands Macao hotel and casino, in Sé, Macao
Do you think the conferences you're running at Sands Resorts Macao are now more in line with the industry-oriented objectives and activations that the Macau government is implementing?
Yes and no. Obviously, one of the country's main focuses is sports tourism, so we organise a lot of meetings and events about sports. The more activations and events your destination can host, the more attractive it will be for congresses in these areas. However, there are many other sectors that are not a fundamental pillar for the government, but are essential for congresses in Macau. For example, the pharmaceutical industry has been growing as a major segment for us, while the medical field is a main focus for the government. Therefore, we target both sectors within our MICE activity.
Another priority area is technology. The government is committed to promoting technological advances in the country, and much of this is related to AI resources and how to convert our processes in a smarter and quicker way. For some time now, we've been hosting various technology events from Silicon Valley companies, such as Microsoft, Intel or Amazon. So there's a bit of overlap, but also a degree of openness to sectors that the government may or may not be focussed on. I always use Formula 1 in Singapore as an example. Even if you're not interested in the race, the destination is still very appealing at that time, as there are concerts every night, activations every day and pop-up activities all over the city. Everyone wants to go because there's so much going on.
Do you feel there is a growing demand to combine business with leisure in conference delegate trends, especially when it comes to carbon footprint? Is there an appetite for the destination beyond the conference itself?
The length of stay is around three nights for a convention guest. Today, I'm starting to see a small increase to three nights for a convention guest and a maximum of two for leisure guests. Nevertheless, Macau has always been a day-trip destination. If we go back 20 years, a leisure guest would only spend one day in the city from Hong Kong. As we book more shows for our resorts and start bringing certain productions back to our theatres, this will also motivate longer stays. In that respect, we've noticed a slight rise in additional nights. However, I don't think we'll be able to go from three to six nights straight away. Macau is still very small. Although it is strategically located in the Delta region and has access to all of Asia, many of our convention delegates still come from Hong Kong, because it effectively serves as our second airport. The location and all the international flights to Hong Kong that arrive in Macau via the bridge are of great interest to us, as they fit in with our international strategy for companies (many of them American) wishing to expand their meetings and events outside their own countries.
Sustainability actions at international events are in full swing, with a focus on reducing the carbon footprint, renewable energy, green transport options and food. As the leader and manager of a large hotel group that welcomes thousands of visitors every year, where do you find yourself in this transition?
Our parent company in Las Vegas has always been very passionate about green initiatives. Sustainability has been a fundamental pillar for us since the beginning. All of our buildings are certified, and when we renovate or build new hotels, we make sure that the various green standards and internal regulations come into play. Whether it's water conservation, solar energy or how to save on electricity. When it comes to meetings, we have many programmes ranging from air conditioning control to how we can help mitigate the carbon footprint through measurements for meeting organisers. This way, they can actually see how much they have reduced their carbon emissions. Many operators are implementing different sustainable policies at the moment, but the area we're focusing on most is gastronomy. A lot of this has to do with the farm-to-table policy. That is, how we can source our products in a desirable proximity to save on food miles. Obviously, within the scale of our property, with 10,000 rooms, something like putting plastic bottles in hotel rooms is unthinkable for us. We're always looking for ways to replace plastic with glass and how it can be recycled and re-purposed on site.
We also work a lot with carbon credits by trying to reduce the footprint of our activity by investing in environmental and social projects or offsetting it with money. For example, during our tradeshows and B2B meetings we constantly need to fly and there is an environmental burden to this. So, one way of offsetting this negative impact is by buying carbon credits. Within our sustainability department, we are actively involved in different projects, such as wind farms, solar farms or a hydroelectric power station. Projects that try to promote eco-sustainability in China. At the end of the day, when we can't reduce, we try to compensate these projects by supporting them with cash.
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What are the must-have priorities and standout features that your business and association visitors value most at Sands Resorts Macao?
Accessibility has always been and continues to be one of the main components in choosing Macao. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge has made life much easier for delegates in this regard. In addition, at the beginning of 2024 we inaugurated an air check-in for Hong Kong International Airport available at the Venetian resort. A dedicated remote airport desk where you can check in, collect your boarding pass and take the bus directly to the airport.
Secondly, I believe that many of our corporate clients are still looking at ESGs and sustainability indicators. Some companies are still scratching the surface, but others already have measurable KPIs that need to be achieved. When many of them need to produce eco-certificates and carbon footprint reports, it's because they need to declare both their activity and the meetings they organise.
Thirdly, there's a big post-pandemic trend emerging at the moment, which is health and wellness. The truth is that most delegates are asking for wellbeing propositions to be embedded into their event programmes. The difference is that it's no longer just about yoga classes or morning runs, but a higher level of offer such as sound baths or mental meditation before a plenary session. Similarly, they are looking for lighter, richer and more nutritious gastronomic options tailored to the performance of a long event, with fewer carbohydrates and more fruit and vegetables. Ten years ago, offering a larger, more international buffet would have been considered satisfactory for the organiser. However, the current trend to reduce all these options is intentional because half the food is wasted. People are more aware of the (un)necessity of having a sushi stall, a Malaysian laksa stand or a paella trolley, and this is reflected in the organisers' priorities.
