Star Gold Coast to focus on local high rollers

Wednesday 8th of July 2020

Star Entertainment’s Gold Coast property plans to focus on luring Australia’s high rollers in the absence of overseas tourists, Group Executive of Operations Geoff Hogg told a local newspaper.

The Star Gold Coast opened its doors last Friday after a Covid-19-mandated shutdown and according to the executive was busy. A further increase in traffic is expected from this Friday, when Queensland opens its borders to visitors from other states apart from Victoria.

Hogg told ABC Gold Coast that hundreds of hotel rooms were booked and restaurants were full.

"It's a good milestone with the border opening and hopefully getting more demand into the city," he was cited as saying.

Hogg conceded that the closure of international borders will have a major impact on the Star Gold Coast and other tourism-dependent businesses in the state.

"It's millions of dollars in our earnings and it's quite significant. "We all understand that that part of our market is not going to be there for a lengthy period of time,” he said.

"We do have some domestic customers that will be pretty critical and we'll be trying to focus on them to come to the Gold Coast," he said.

However, he also expressed concern about the impact of racist attacks on Chinese and Asians due to the pandemic. China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued an alert in June, reporting a "significant increase" in racist attacks on "Chinese and Asian people" due to COVID-19.