Crown Sydney to offer VIPs “once-in-a-lifetime taste of rural Australia”

Australian casino operator Crown Resorts plans to offer VIPs a rural retreat if they get tired of Sydney’s city lights.

Crown majority owner and erstwhile chairman James Packer (pictured) has said that the “no project is more important to me” than the in-development Crown Sydney. The casino, which expects to open in November 2019, has a firm focus on high-rollers, but so does virtually every casino being built in the Asia-Pacific region, so how does one differentiate?

For one thing, Crown Sydney’s A$2b budget works out to approximately $4.5m per room, or roughly twice what Steve Wynn paid to build the swank di tutti swanky Bellagio resort in Las Vegas. Crown Sydney’s most opulent suite is a three-story sky villa, complete with its own kitchen, theater, bar and entertainment area, gym, sauna and a private terrace with a Jacuzzi.

But what to do when VIPs get tired of sucking champagne while sitting in a frothing pool of bubbles gazing out at the Opera House? You ship them off to the airport, load them onto a private jet and wing them away to a luxury rural retreat.