You might expect casino billionaires to experience their properties differently from the thousands of others who pass through the doors each day.
Take Galaxy Entertainment vice-chairman Francis Lui Yiu-tung, 55, who spent a recent weekend with his wife in the presidential suite of the Okura Hotel within his five-month-old, HK$16.5 billion Cotai resort complex.
'It was nice,' Lui said, then paused. 'The ice cubes were too small.'
Lui's attention to detail is part of a much bigger, bolder goal for Galaxy, a company he said that 'could one day become the leading Asian gaming operator'.
'With this vision in our minds, we are driving ourselves every day to make sure we will be able to achieve that position. It's not easy, because we have so many good operators around town,' Lui said.
Ten short years ago, Galaxy was a relative unknown among the 21 companies that submitted bids for Macau's first post-monopoly gaming licences. Its main shareholder, Lui's father and the company's current chairman, billionaire Lui Che-woo, 81, had decades of experience in construction, real estate and hotels; but no track record in the casino industry. Galaxy won entry to the market largely because of an eleventh-hour tie-up with casino and convention giant Las Vegas Sands in February 2002, but the partners disagreed over strategy and by December of that year had gone their separate ways.
