February 2020 marked the 50th anniversary of one of the most iconic buildings in Macau, Hotel Lisboa. Would it be an exaggeration to say that the opening of Hotel Lisboa on February 3, 1970 had a greater impact on Macau than The Venetian did 37 years later? Certainly, the new generation of integrated resorts on Cotai was revolutionary, but perhaps not as much so as Hotel Lisboa in its time.
It is indisputable that over the past 15 years, the US-based gaming operators have brought to Macau a dynamic that the market had never previously seen. But, in essence, Macau casinos today, are basically not that much different from what they were in 1980. That is to say, the buildings of Sands or Wynn, for example, may have more lights, mirrors and glamor, and certainly a more refined offering, but they still play according to the rules invented by Stanley Ho, long before the market was liberalized in 2001.
In other words, the new operators brought the style and image of Las Vegas, but not necessarily the gaming habits of Las Vegas – a fact which did cause some confusion and misunderstanding in the local market in the initial stages of these new ventures.
Gambling in Macau, as we know it today, attracting millions annually, was invented at Casino Lisboa right then in 1970. “The opening of Casino Lisboa would change the course of the city’s history,” wrote architect Rita Serra e Silva, in her 2015 master’s thesis: “In the spatiality of Macau casinos”.
A pioneer
The concept of ‘Integrated Resorts’ (IR), which the government is about to enshrine in a revised version of the gaming law, and which is currently a very present reality in Cotai, was in fact born when Hotel Lisboa was inaugurated.
Together in the same space, though physically delineated, one could find a casino (on three floors), a hotel (with 106 rooms in the first phase), a diversified restaurant offering (with emphasis on fine dining at Portas do Sol and Galera), several stores and a 24-hour coffee shop. The complex also featured Macau’s first bowling alley, the first and only dodgem car attraction, and the city’s first out-door heated swimming pool. In essence, the complex was not that different from the concept of the current Integrated Resorts, even if this particular terminology did not cross the mind of Stanley Ho and his partners at Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau (STDM) – Teddy Yip, Henry Fok, and Yip Hon.
“Although the term was not used at the time, it was the first ‘integrated resort’ in Macau, built from scratch for this purpose,” says Jorge Godinho in his book The Casinos of Macau.
The predominance of Baccarat, and the VIP rooms and their junkets (gambling promoters) were born and developed in Casino Lisboa, and decades later they are still the main source of revenue in the local gaming industry. Even in the mass market, Baccarat remains the most popular game.
“The rise of Baccarat is without a doubt the great phenomenon of these years. In 1977 it was already the biggest game in town, representing 37 percent of the market, in 1984 it constituted no less than 65 percent of the market,” notes Jorge Godinho, a scholar in the Faculty of Law at the University of Macau. In 2019, VIP and mass market baccarat accounted for 87.5 percent of the MOP292 billion recorded (source: MacauHub).
“The iconic roof architecture, in the form of a roulette wheel, embodied the arrival of Western games and the always peculiar or even extravagant shape of the buildings that house casinos,” summarizes Godinho. Even the coincidence of Hotel Lisboa being built on reclaimed land, just like those properties more recently built on the Cotai Strip, reaffirms its role as a pioneering predecessor in the industry.
STDM won the Macau gambling monopoly concession in 1962, and almost immediately undertook to build Hotel Lisboa. But it would take time. In the meantime, it opened its first casino at Hotel Estoril, in a speedily renovated building, just so as not to deprive customers of their passion for gambling. (Several new operators would follow a similar strategy decades later).
Hotel Lisboa was truly something totally different. A 1970 postcard describes it as “the most impressive building in the Far East”, perhaps a hyperbolic description, but nevertheless one that shows the impact the building had on the local scene.
“When it was built, it was overvalued. It was too big for those days. You would arrive at Penha, look down at the bay and see a monster there, visually almost competing with Guia hill, although it did not obstruct it,” recalls Macanese architect José Maneiras in 2008, who closely followed all stages of the construction process.
“It was the catalyst for Macau’s change in all aspects, from gambling to tourism, urban expansion, hotels, and transportation,” adds Maneiras, a former president of the Municipal Council (Leal Senado) in the 1990’s. Jorge Godinho mentions in his book a ‘must see’ effect caused by the complex. And researchers Philip H. Loughlin and Clifton W. Pannell use the word ‘landmark’ to describe it. “Since its opening, Lisboa has become a symbol of Macau’s success,” Stanley Ho later stated.
Rise and Fall
According to José Maneiras, “when it first appeared, Hotel Lisboa became one of the main tourist attractions in Macau. It almost rivalled the Ruins of St Paul”. Given the property’s unique design, its reputation as an iconic building of modernity at the time is understandable, but the fact that it remains so today almost half a century later is even more impressive.
Sadly however, STDM was a victim of their own success and seemed to fall asleep under the shadow of the Lisboa effect. Despite adding a 270-room extension in 1991, the bringing the total number of rooms to 927, the truth is, that by the late 1990s, Hotel Lisboa was already a building in slow decay, with its dark corridors, retail spaces that were barely occupied, and a black carpeted casino littered with trash and torn cloth on the gaming tables – this is how it was described to Sheldon Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas Sands, by one of his envoys who was asked by the Sands magnate to spy on his future competitor.
In 2001, STDM, through its subsidiary SJM, finished in third place in the international bidding competition for new casino licenses, arguably only grabbing the third and last concession available because it was considered too big to fail. With the end of the STDM concession, on March 31, 2002, Casino Lisboa reverted to the Government of Macau, as foreseen under the terms of the 1962 tender. In 2007, it was finally sold back to the concessionaire. That is, while today the casino belongs to SJM, everything else, including the hotel, is owned by STDM.
Lucky Designs
Like many buildings in Macau, and certainly the casinos, Hotel Lisboa was meticulously designed to include a variety of Feng Shui elements to ensure its long-term success and good fortune. Most noticeably is its iconic Chinese bird cage design. Upon entering the cage, gamblers are trapped and must remain inside to spend their money. Although some observers also note that the cage design is not completely closed, allowing patrons to leave when they run out of money and return again later. The main entrance to the building is believed by some to represent a tiger, that will eat up the gamblers money. Above the main door flows a structure that looks like the wings of a bat, and the view looking up appears like the mouth of a bat. The word for bat in Cantonese – ‘fuk’ – sounds the same as the word for happiness and luck. And on the ceiling as you enter the main entrance is an impressive tiled mosaic of old Portuguese caravel sailing vessels, used by early explorers, which might initially seem like a nod to the city’s European heritage, but these boats were also used by pirates on the South China Sea who were famous for robbing people of their valuable possessions.
A whole new look…almost
Despite all the glitzy new casinos in town, the exterior façade of the original Hotel Lisboa is still a very popular spot for visitors wanting to take photos and selfies in front of this iconic building. So it’s probably fortuitous that plans to redesign the hotel never actually made it off the drawing board. In 2008, two years after the opening of Grand Lisboa Hotel, SJM announced that it was holding an international architectural design competition for proposals to redevelop the site of the Lisboa Hotel. Six designers accepted the challenge and submitted their ideas, which were revealed to the public in September that year. The brief given to the designers rather vaguely stated that the new building should represent the ‘timeless iconic development’ of SJM and Macau. It should also feature cost-effective construction and efficient design. The designs were reviewed by a panel of SJM senior executives and advisors to choose the eventual winner, however none was ever announced and the redevelopment plans were ultimately scrapped, likely due to the impacts of the global financial crisis. Had the crisis not happened, perhaps we would not be able to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the hotel at all.
