The first legal casino in Cyprus finally opened the doors to the visitors on June 28, as stated in the Cyprus Mail. So far, there have been 7,000 visitors, and this number will increase a lot in the future, according to the officials. They stated that there would undoubtedly be a lot of challenges and that they were quite aware of this fact. However, they added that they believed in the whole operation and that, when looking long-term, the success is inevitable.
The name of this casino is simply Cyprus Casino, which is often abbreviated to only C2. The main company responsible for building the casino and putting things in motion is the giant in the industry of gambling and hospitality known as Melco International Development. The new casino is located in Zakaki, Limassol and it currently has 242 slot machines, 33 tables for gaming, and has over 4,600 square meters reserved only for gaming. Sure, this may not seem like something big as Melco is known for much bigger casinos. However, this casino is just the first in line to open and serve as a “temporary” casino until one of the biggest casinos in this part of Europe begins in Cyprus.
Namely, Melco International has made a deal with the Cyprus officials to build a €550-million integrated resort which will incorporate not only casinos but also a hotel and facilities for the food and beverages. This project is said to be finished by 2021, but the Melco officials could not wait for that long as Cyprus is the perfect market for them – a land with a lot of tourists and a lot of potential for further growth. This, of course, resulted in the solution of the additional casinos which will support the main one.
Huge Impact
The president of the C2 property, Craig Ballantyne, stated that there had been 7,000 unique visitors so far and that the first week since the opening of the casino had seen 2,000 visits per day. Ballantyne added that 4,000 of the visitors had joined the unique reward program that the venue offered. However, most of the visitors, according to Ballantyne, came out of curiosity and are not interested in regular casino gaming. They just came out to see what is happening inside of a casino, as most of the locals were curious and interested in at least trying out different casino games.
Many of the Cypriots are not familiar with casinos, as this was the first official and legal casino in the country. However, there were also people of other nationalities that visited the venue – people from Greece, Ukraine, Russia, the UK, Lebanon, and Italy.
The visitors were mostly interested in the slot machines, probably due to the fact that they were the easiest to understand and play. However, the casino also offers other traditional casino games such as roulette, many types of poker, and blackjack.
