Jeju Dream Tower August casino sales up 7.5pct y-o-y to US$34mln

August casino sales for South Korea’s Lotte Tour Development Co Ltd reached nearly KRW46.22 billion (US$33.7 million), up by 7.5 percent year-on-year, according to a Tuesday filing with the Korea Exchange. Judged sequentially, last month’s casino sales were down 10.4 percent from July’s KRW51.59 billion, the latter having been the best monthly performance so far this year. Table-game sales at Lotte Tour’s foreigner-only casino at the Jeju Dream Tower resort (pictured in a file photo) were approximately KRW43.49 billion in August, up 5.7 percent from a year earlier, but down 11.1 percent from July. The sequential decline came despite a sharp increase in betting volume. Casino-table drop – the amount paid by customers to purchase chips for table games – rose 35.5 percent from July to circa KRW293.78 billion in August. It was also up 16.8 percent year-on-year. The contrasting trends coincided with a lower table-game hold rate. The figure stood at 14.8 percent in August, the lowest so far this year, according to supplementary business data published on Tuesday. The August hold rate was down from 16.4 percent a year earlier. Lotte Tour’s August machine-game sales generated nearly KRW2.73 billion, up 49.5 percent year-on-year and a 1.4-percent increase from July. The gaming-machine hold rate was 6.4 percent in August, an improvement from 5.8 percent in July and 6.2 percent a year earlier. The Jeju property logged 59,048 casino visitors in August, up 3.5 percent year-on-year, but down 5.8 percent sequentially. Jeju Dream Tower’s hotel sales for August were KRW8.77 billion, flat sequentially, but up 4.9 percent year-on-year. For the eight months to August 31, Lotte Tour’s casino sales totalled nearly KRW363.56 billion, up 29.4 percent year-on-year, with both table games and gaming machines recording double-digit percentage growth in sales. Casino-table drop for the first eight months of 2026 stood at nearly KRW1.72 trillion, up 13.7 percent year-on-year. Hotel sales for the January to August period amounted to nearly KRW58.48 billion, up 12.0 percent year-on-year. The company provided no commentary on the reasons for the year-on-year or sequential changes.