{"id":365583,"date":"2022-04-04T06:06:17","date_gmt":"2022-04-03T20:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=365583"},"modified":"2022-04-04T06:06:17","modified_gmt":"2022-04-03T20:06:17","slug":"ipi-confident-of-resuming-operations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/ipi-confident-of-resuming-operations\/","title":{"rendered":"IPI confident of resuming operations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Editor\u2019s Note: Reprinted with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Imperial Pacific International Holdings says it still plans to complete construction of its troubled Saipan casino, Imperial Palace Saipan, despite the property having been closed for the past two years and the local regulator poised to revoke its license.<\/p>\n<p>The update formed part of IPI\u2019s fiscal year 2021 results announcement overnight, which saw the company fall to a HK$690.6 million (US$88.2 million) loss\u2014narrowed from a loss of HK$7.39 billion (US$943.6 million) in 2020 due to reduced expenses. The suspension of casino operations saw the group record no revenue in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>As previously reported by\u00a0Inside Asian Gaming, the Commonwealth Casino Commission is due to\u00a0meet in May to determine whether to revoke IPI\u2019s casino license\u00a0for failure to comply with certain requirements under its license agreement.<\/p>\n<p>The CCC has called on IPI to pay a US$15.5 million\u00a0casino license fee\u00a0and US$3.1 million\u00a0regulatory fee it failed to pay in 2020, plus a\u00a0US$6.6 million fine, to avoid revocation although IPI has disputed the need to pay up, citing a\u00a0force majeure\u00a0clause in its license agreement.<\/p>\n<p>Despite uncertainty over its future, the absence of revenue and the fact that construction is stalled on Imperial Palace Saipan, IPI said in its fiscal year 2021 results announcement on Thursday that it \u201cremains committed to our mission of enhancing the tourism of Saipan and creating local opportunities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDespite the current impact from [COVID-19], we believe visitation to the island of Saipan still has great potential in the long run benefiting from the island\u2019s favorable weather, stunning attractions, [proximate] location and flexible visa policies, with more hotels to be built and opened.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce the travel restrictions in Saipan are lifted, the casino in Imperial Palace Saipan shall resume operations and be opened to public. We expect the successional opening of villas and hotel rooms of Imperial Palace Saipan, subject to the lifting of the global travel restrictions, will enhance our capacity to welcome visitors to Saipan.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>This story was originally published by Inside Asian Gaming. The original article was posted here: https:\/\/www.asgam.com\/index.php\/2022\/04\/01\/imperial-pacific-falls-to-us88-million-loss-in-fy21-but-confident-of-resuming-saipan-casino-operations\/<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben Blaschke (Inside Asian Gaming)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Editor\u2019s Note: Reprinted with permission. Imperial Pacific International Holdings says it still plans to complete&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":361651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[12497],"class_list":["post-365583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-ipi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}