Two Way Hard Three | Las Vegas Casino & Design Blog

July 20, 2005

Colony Capital to Buy Raffles

Posted by Hunter

According to this USA Today article, Colony Capital is purchasing the Raffles Hotel Group.

Colony has been on a buying spree lately, picking up the Las Vegas Hilton among other properties. Raffles is one of the best known luxury hotel brands in the world.

This could have interesting implications for a Raffles in Las Vegas... I also believe that there was talk of Raffles running one of the properties in Las Vegas Sands' Cotai Strip development in Macau.

USA Today: Colony Buys Raffles

"Los Angeles-based Colony Capital said Monday it has agreed to buy the iconic Raffles Hotel in Singapore and 40 other properties owned by parent Raffles Holdings."

Technorati Tags: , ,


Categories: Business of Gaming


Comments

Read archived comments (3 so far)
July 20, 2005 12:54 PM Posted by detroit1051

Colony Capital has done very well buying, improving and then selling properties at a good gain. I wonder if they have adjusted that strategy with casinos and are now a permanent player in gaming.

Colony's Resorts Division now has six casino/hotels including the Las Vegas Hilton and AC Hilton. The only one I'm personally familiar with is the LV Hilton. It began to deteriorate in the early 1990's and now, under Colony/Resorts ownership is flourishing again as a strong convention hotel with some decent entertainment and even an Andre Rochat restaurant.

Does anyone know Colony's gaming intentions in the long term?

Here are the six properties:
http://www.resortscasinos.com/media/

July 20, 2005 5:00 PM Posted by Hunter

Test

July 21, 2005 6:23 AM Posted by Ehrlich

Colony Capital has done some very impressive buying. They stole the Las Vegas Hilton for about $300 million. The hotel includes some of the nicest suites in Vegas that have been known to house Bill Gates year after year for the Comdex Convention. They also picked up the Ac Hitlon which is starting to also do well with their great beach bar and plans are in hte mix to double the size of the casino and increase the size of the hotel by 50%. As for their long term plan in gaming they really have done well expanding the Resorts name. After building the Rendezvous tower they attracted a slick, suave and art deco look and theme that they are now using at their two new resort properties. The two properties they got came from the caesars and Harrahs merger and I believe were Bally's Tunica and Harrah's east chicago which they have rebranded as resorts and started a whole new brand name kind of like how caesars and harrahs are found all over the country. When it came to buying hotels and casinos they came into the market at the right time by taking advantage of the Caesars and Harrahs merger and the process in which harrahs had to sell off properties, 3 of which went to colony capital.