Jeju Dream Tower's Casino Revenue Fell 45% in September on Its Lowest Table Hold Since 2023

Lotte Tour Development drew a record 66,393 casino visitors to Jeju Dream Tower in September and kept the smallest share of their table play in almost three years. Its two listed rivals grew in the same month, and the company is calling it a run of bad luck that October will correct.

• Lotte Tour Development reported September net casino revenue at Jeju Dream Tower of ₩29.1 billion, approximately $21.4 million, down 45.1% year on year and 37.7% on August, in a provisional filing on 1 October
• Table revenue fell 49.6% to ₩25.8 billion, about $19.0 million, while machine revenue rose 80.6% to ₩3.31 billion, about $2.43 million
• Casino visitors reached a monthly record of 66,393, but table drop fell 10.5% year on year to ₩237.8 billion, about $175 million, and the table hold rate fell to 10.8%, the lowest since December 2023, against a 12-month average of 20.0%
• Over nine months casino revenue is still up 17.7% at ₩393.1 billion, about $289 million, on table drop up 10.1% to ₩1.96 trillion, about $1.44 billion
• The rest of South Korea's foreigner-only market grew in September: Paradise reported casino revenue up 38.2% and Grand Korea Leisure up 7.2%

A Record Crowd and the Weakest Hold in Almost Three Years

Lotte Tour Development, which owns and operates the Jeju Dream Tower integrated resort, disclosed provisional September results to the Korea Exchange on 1 October. Net casino revenue was ₩29,086 million, approximately $21.4 million, against ₩46,657 million in August and ₩52,948 million in September 2025, falls of 37.7% and 45.1%. Table games accounted for almost all of it: table revenue was ₩25,778 million, down 41.3% on the month and 49.6% on the year. Machine revenue rose to ₩3,308 million, up 21.3% on August and 80.6% on a year earlier. Consolidated hotel revenue fell 8.7% year on year to ₩6.33 billion, about $4.65 million.

The filing reports casino revenue net of deductions such as commissions paid to agents, under international accounting standards. The Korea Casino Association's figure for Dream Tower's September gross revenue was ₩37,596 million, about $27.6 million, the company notes, a difference of ₩8,510 million, or about 23% of the gross figure.

Table drop, the amount customers paid for chips, was ₩237,824 million, down 19.0% on August and 10.5% on September 2025. The company put visitors at 66,393, a monthly record above the previous high of 63,192 in May, and Asia Gaming Brief reported that this was up 12.4% year on year. The table hold rate was 10.8%, the lowest since December 2023 and about half the 20.0% average of the previous 12 months, according to the company's figures reported by Money Today and the Seoul Economic Daily.

The month dragged down the quarter. Third-quarter casino revenue was ₩127.3 billion, about $93.6 million, down 13.4% on the second quarter, even though table drop rose 17.4% to ₩748.4 billion and the quarter's 188,147 visitors were a record, the Seoul Economic Daily reported. Shares in Lotte Tour Development were down 7.4% at ₩10,880 on the day of the filing, according to Money Today.

The Company Calls It Luck, and Points to October

"The hold rate can be heavily affected by luck over a short period, but over the long term it converges on the statistical average win rate," a Lotte Tour Development official told Money Today, in a translation of the Korean. The company expects better fourth-quarter results from rising visitor numbers and a recovery in hold, it said. It told the Seoul Economic Daily that October hotel occupancy should reach nearly 94%, against 84.4% a year earlier, that direct international flight routes would expand substantially from October, and that it expects "record-level results" in the fourth quarter. More than 1,560 of the Grand Hyatt Jeju's 1,600 rooms were booked on the busiest day of China's National Day holiday, according to Money Today.

The Rest of the Market Had a Better Month

The other listed operators of South Korea's 17 foreigner-only casinos reported on 2 October. Paradise Co, which runs four casinos in Seoul, Jeju, Busan and Incheon, reported September casino revenue of ₩86.7 billion, about $63.8 million, up 38.2% year on year, on table drop up 6.6% to ₩605.1 billion, according to its filing as reported by DigitalToday. Grand Korea Leisure (GKL) reported ₩37.3 billion, about $27.4 million, up 7.2%, with drop up 2.4% to ₩323.7 billion.

Demand at the national level is strong. International arrivals rose 21.6% to 15.05 million in the first eight months of the year, the highest in 30 years, with visitors from China up 29.0% to 4.82 million, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said, according to Asia Gaming Brief. The same ministry is pursuing a rise in the ceiling on the levy that foreigner-only casinos pay to the tourism fund, from 10% of revenue to 15%, while opening that fund to casino construction loans.

About Four-Fifths of the Fall Is Hold, but Not All of It

The company is right that the headline is mostly a hold story. Applying September 2025's implied table hold of about 19.2% to this year's drop would have produced roughly ₩45.7 billion of table revenue rather than ₩25.8 billion; on that arithmetic, which is ours rather than the company's, hold explains about four-fifths of the ₩25.3 billion fall in table revenue and lower drop the remaining fifth. That remaining fifth matters. Visitors rose and drop fell, which means the average visitor bought fewer chips: on the reported figures, drop per visitor was about ₩3.6 million in September against roughly ₩4.5 million a year earlier, a fall of about a fifth. Machine revenue up 80.6% points the same way. Dream Tower is attracting more players who each play less, which is a mix question rather than a run of bad cards.

A Single-Property Operator Lives With This Volatility

Paradise and GKL each run several venues and both grew in September, so the month says more about Dream Tower than about Korean demand. A one-resort company with high-value baccarat play will have months like this, and deductions such as agent commissions, worth about 23% of gross revenue in September, are a reminder of how much of that play comes through intermediaries. It matters more here because of the balance sheet: Lotte Tour Development ended 2025 with ₩1.80 trillion of liabilities against ₩368 billion of equity, according to its filings as summarised by DigitalToday, and casino revenue was 72.9% of the group's sales. A 7.4% share price fall on one month's hold is the market pricing that concentration.

October Is the Test of the Company's Explanation

Hold reverts, and the company has the bookings to make October a strong month if it does. The Chinese holiday, more direct flights and record national arrivals all favour Jeju. But the claim to watch is not the hold rate, which will almost certainly rise from 10.8%; it is whether drop per visitor recovers alongside it. If the crowd keeps growing while each player brings less, the 20% hold the company is counting on will be applied to a smaller base.

September was a bad month at the tables, and the company is probably right that most of it was luck. The part that was not luck is the part investors should be asking about.