The Londoner Macao

The Londoner Macao is Sands China's London-themed resort in the heart of the Cotai Strip, Macau's answer to the Las Vegas Strip. It is not a new build: it is Sands Cotai Central, one of the biggest hotel complexes on the island, rebuilt inside and out with British landmarks, a replica Houses of Parliament facade and its own Big Ben. If you have read about casinos in Macau you will know the Cotai Strip as the cluster of giant resorts around the Venetian, and the Londoner sits right in the middle of them.

From Sands Cotai Central to The Londoner Macao

The story starts in 2011, when Sands China announced Sands Cotai Central, a 13.7 million-square-foot integrated resort planned at 6,400 rooms, one of the largest hospitality projects in the world at the time⁵. It opened in phases from April 2012, with the Conrad and Holiday Inn hotels plus one casino first, and reached full operation with the last tower in December 2015⁶.

The complex was huge, but it never had a strong identity of its own. Analysts noted that it was one of Las Vegas Sands' worst-performing assets, lacking the distinctiveness and tourist appeal of sister properties like The Venetian or The Parisian⁷. In October 2017, Sands China announced the fix: renovate, expand and rebrand the whole complex as The Londoner Macao, a London-themed resort, with work starting in 2018 and completion expected in 2020⁸.

The conversion began with the Holiday Inn tower. Hoardings went up in a ground-floor atrium at the Holiday Inn end of the building, decorated with the London Underground red-circle logo and a "Next stop, London" sign in English and Chinese. The plan was to take the 1,200-room Holiday Inn and turn it into a 600-room all-suite hotel, and Sands stressed that no table game or slot machine would be lost during the work, since gaming assets could be shifted to other floors in the portfolio⁴.

The renovation added 350 luxury suites and extensive London theming inside and out, and the company completed the transformation in 2022⁴. Today the resort invites visitors on a journey through British history and culture, from a replica Houses of Parliament facade to streetscapes modeled on London³.

Location: on the Cotai Strip

The Londoner Macao sits on the Cotai Strip, the stretch of reclaimed land between Taipa and Coloane where most of Macau's biggest resorts now stand. It is located across the Cotai Strip from The Venetian Macao, The Parisian Macao and The Plaza Macao, and next door to City of Dreams¹.

Getting between them is easy. A pedestrian bridge was built connecting the complex with The Venetian Macao and The Plaza Macao across the road, linking the three properties⁶. The Parisian Macao is connected to The Venetian Macao, and thereby to The Plaza Macao and The Londoner Macao, so the four resorts together form one interconnected resort city on Cotai¹⁰. In practice, you can walk from your Londoner hotel room to the Venetian's casino floor without going outside.

The Venetian Macao, the anchor property of the cluster, is about three kilometers from the Macao Taipa Ferry Terminal, which gives you a sense of the scale: everything on Cotai is close together, and the Londoner is in the middle of it. For the wider picture of how the resorts are laid out and how to move between them, see getting to and around Macau's casinos.

Gaming space: 479 tables and 858 slots

The casino at The Londoner Macao has approximately 351,000 square feet of gaming space¹, with 479 gaming tables and 858 slot machines or similar electronic gaming facilities as of the end of 2022². That makes it one of the larger gaming floors on Cotai, comparable to its neighbors.

For context, here is how the Londoner stacks up against the other Sands properties as of the end of 2022²:

The floor is themed, with over 365,000 square feet (34,000 square meters) of distinctively designed gaming areas announced for the converted resort¹¹. Before the rebrand, Sands Cotai Central ran two casinos within the complex, so the gaming was spread across the property from the start¹².

The games themselves are what you find across Macau: baccarat dominates the table pits, with the usual spread of blackjack, sic bo and other games alongside. If you want to know what is on the tables and how each game works, see our pages on casino games in Macau, baccarat and slot machines in Macau. Entry follows the same rules as every casino in the territory, covered in our page on casino entry rules in Macau.

Five hotel brands, from Conrad to St. Regis

The Londoner Macao features four towers housing five hotel brands¹. The lineup today is:

• The Londoner Hotel
• Londoner Grand
• Conrad Macao
• Sheraton Grand Macao
• The St. Regis Macao¹³

The towers have a history of their own, since they opened one at a time under the old Sands Cotai Central name¹⁴:

The renovation reshuffled the brands. The Holiday Inn's 1,224 rooms in Tower 1 gave way to the Londoner Grand, alongside the 654 Conrad five-star rooms and suites that stayed in place². Tower 2 now holds The Londoner Hotel's London-themed suites. The two Sheraton towers, with 1,842 and 2,126 rooms, kept their brand, and the St. Regis tower kept its 400 rooms and suites².

What this means practically: the Sheraton Grand is the value option by Cotai standards and the biggest hotel in the complex, the Conrad and St. Regis sit at the luxury end, and the two Londoner-branded hotels are all-suite properties with the strongest theming, down to the Beckham-designed suites.

What opened in phases and what came later

The Londoner Macao opened in phases throughout 2021¹. The first phase was completed in the first quarter of 2021, with the opening ceremony on February 8¹⁵. That first phase delivered the new London-themed suites and the first wave of public spaces.

The signature exterior pieces came later. The Houses of Parliament facade and Big Ben did not open until later in 2021¹⁶. The Sheraton side of the complex was still under renovation into 2021, with restaurants and gaming facilities coming online progressively and the retail area opening portion by portion¹⁷.

The timeline slipped from the original plan. When Sands announced the project in 2017, the conversion was expected to begin in the second quarter of 2018 and complete within 18 to 24 months, which would have meant 2020¹⁸. The hotel expansion was at one point expected to finish in 2019¹⁹. In the end, the company completed the renovation, expansion and rebranding in 2022⁴.

If you visit today, none of this matters day to day: the work is finished, and the resort operates as one property. But it explains why the complex still shows its layered history, with tower architecture from 2012 to 2015 wrapped in a London streetscape added a decade later.

Shopping, dining and convention space

The Londoner Macao segment of Sands China's business covers the operation of casinos, hotels and shopping malls, plus catering services²⁰, and the non-gaming side is a big part of what the resort does.

The original Sands Cotai Central was announced with 1.2 million square feet of shopping, dining, convention and performance facilities, alongside its 300,000 square feet of casino⁶. That retail and dining space carried over into the Londoner, rethemed to match. The scale is easiest to grasp by comparison with its neighbor: The Parisian Macao, a similar-sized Sands resort, runs about 296,000 square feet of retail space with 109 stores and 23 restaurants and eateries², and the Londoner's mall is in the same family of connected shopping corridors.

Because the Londoner links to the Venetian, the Parisian and the Plaza by bridge, the effective shopping and dining district is far larger than any single resort. You can eat in a different place every night for a week without leaving the connected complex.

The convention side matters too. The original development included expansive meeting and convention space¹², and that carried through the rebrand. If you are visiting for a conference rather than the tables, the Londoner is one of the venues on Cotai that handles large events, and its position in the middle of the interconnected resort cluster makes it convenient for anything happening at the neighboring properties.

A few practical notes for a first visit. The resort is designed for walking: arrive at the Cotai Strip, park or get dropped off once, and everything from the casino to the shops to the other Sands resorts is reachable on foot or by bridge. The theming is the draw for many visitors, so even if gambling is not your main interest, the London facades, the Big Ben replica and the themed suites give the property plenty to look at. And if the Londoner's floor does not have the table you want, the Venetian's much larger casino is a short walk away.