Luxury hotel chain Marriott International has acquired 30 luxury flats in a top-end residential project in Taipa, Macau, overlooking Cotai Strip, and plans to turn them into timeshare holiday homes.
Marriott Vacation Club International has bought five floors at the Buckingham, within a walking distance to Cotai - where strata-title sales of flats in developments in the area are prohibited, says Jeff Wong Chi-wai, head of Macau residential sales at Jones Lang LaSalle, the marketing agent of the project.
Under existing rules, reclaimed land on Cotai Strip is set aside for casino and hotel purposes only.
Las Vegas Sands Corp petitioned the Macau government in October last year to lift the ban on the sale of serviced flats at its Venetian Macao on Cotai Strip, but so far there has been no progress.
'It is the first time for a hotel chain to buy flats [in Macau] and rent them out to club members as short-term holiday homes,' Mr Wong said.
The club, which set up its office in Hong Kong two years ago and has 30,000 members, operates 46 timeshare resorts close to golf courses, beaches and popular holiday destinations. Its resorts are in United States, France and Spain. In Asia, it operates only one such resort, the Marriott Phuket Beach Club in Thailand.