After announcing late last week that it had delayed the opening of its MGM Cotai Casino Resort until the second quarter of next year, MGM Resorts International has now revealed that the $3.1 billion development is likely to premier “only with mass tables”.

The revelation from Grant Bowie, Chief Executive Officer for the American firm’s MGM China Holdings Limited subsidiary, comes as the operator continues to await final approval from the government on just how many tables the new facility will be permitted to host.

“In Cotai we’ve already made the decision that we’re envisaging opening only with mass tables,” said Bowie. “That’s obviously the basis of where we see the future of Macau and that’s the decision that we have taken at this time. We’re going to walk forward as being a mass-only property.”

MGM Resorts International initially expected to offer up to 500 gaming tables at the Cotai property but government officials recently explained that the final allocation is to be subject to a cap linked to several issues including the amount of non-gaming facilities by the new development.

“We have to work co-operatively with the government; we have to accept the decision the government makes, then we have to make our plan to ensure that we can be successful,” said Bowie. “MGM has already focused on the mass market. We’re one of the bigger contributors to that sector. We obviously understand that the market is diversifying and we need to be very responsive to that. Our Cotai property has been designed to cater to many, many different types of customers with particular emphasis on the non-gaming but also on providing a variety of opportunities for our visitors to partake in all sorts of mass-gaming opportunities.”

Alongside a casino and approximately 1,500 hotel rooms and suites, MGM Cotai Casino Resort is set to feature meeting spaces, a luxury spa and shops and restaurants alongside its Spectacle Show, which will allow the venue to project huge images in an atrium area utilising 23 LED walls. As if this wasn’t enough, it is moreover due to offer a theatre with up to 14 seating arrangements.

“We’re very excited with what we are creating and I can assure you that it will be such that we will be able to introduce new opportunities that people have not seen in Macau; but actually they haven’t seen in China either,” said Bowie.