Lotte Tour's Jeju Island casino hits record revenue in July

South Korea’s Lotte Tour Development's Jeju-based casino saw record revenue in July thanks to an increased number of foreign tourists to the country’s largest island for their summer vacation.

Lotte Tour announced on Thursday that the casino in its Jeju Dream Tower Integrated Resort took in a record-high 20.1 billion won ($15.5 million) last month, nearly doubling 10.3 billion won in June. The number of casino visitors amounted to 27,005 in July, up 21.5% from June.

The luxury resort, which opened in June 2021, was hit hard by the pandemic and posted a 224.7 billion won net loss last year.

The casino’s July drops, or the money exchanged for chips, reached a record-high 130.2 billion won, up 25.5% from June. That compares with the monthly average of 26.3 billion won posted from June 2021 to May 2022.

The company is welcoming more foreign visitors to stay at the hotel in the resort. Visitors from overseas accounted for 61% of Grand Hyatt Jeju guests in July, nearly double 32% in March. The resort’s performance will further improve as more direct flights between Jeju and foreign countries and large cruise ships come to the island from August, a Lotte Tour official said.

More flights for foreign visitors are benefiting the island’s tourism industry. The number of direct overseas flights to Jeju was 60 per week until mid-June, and since then the number has jumped to 100 with new and reinstated routes from Beijing, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Shenyang, Hong Kong and Macau.

The number of foreign visitors to Jeju amounted to 214,000 in the first half, nearly eight times the same period last year, according to the Jeju Tourism Association. Some 89,000 foreign tourists arrived on the island in July, compared with 49,000 in May and 64,000 in June.

Write to Young Chan Song at 0full@hankyung.com


Jihyun Kim edited this article.