Hong Kong Firm Buys Huis Ten Bosch

Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Huis Ten Bosch, the Dutch-style theme park in Sasebo, Nagasaki, is to be sold to PAG, a Hong Kong-based private asset management firm, throwing a new twist into plans to build a major casino resort at the same location.

Until now, the theme park has been owned by a consortium of Japanese interests led by the travel company H.I.S. The sales price is ¥66.7 billion (US$480 million).

The once-troubled Huis Ten Bosch prospered for a decade in the hands of H.I.S. Having opened originally in 1992, the cost of construction and weak visitation landed the theme park in bankruptcy in 2003. But when H.I.S. took over in 2010, it soon became the largest tourist attraction on the island of Kyushu.

Without the backing of one of Japan’s largest tourism companies, presumably the plan is to rev up visitation from Hong Kong and China once international tourists are free to return to Japan.

It is unclear how the sale of Huis Ten Bosch might affect the licensing process for the Integrated Resort (IR) including a casino. The Hong Kong investors will not have any direct stake–at least initially–in the Casinos Austria-run facility, but naturally the two businesses will share a lot of common interests should the IR be built.

The sale does suggest that if there is a Nagasaki IR, its prosperity will be tightly connected to its draw of Chinese visitors.

As for H.I.S., its leader Hideo Sawada had long signaled his doubts that a Nagasaki IR would produce profits that would justify the multi-billion dollar costs of building the casino wonderland. With the additional financial hit stemming from the pandemic, he apparently decided that this was the opportune time to withdraw from the Dutch-style theme park which he had transformed into a major tourist attraction in western Japan.

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