Multibillion-dollar integrated resort Mohegan Inspire opens in Incheon

[Courtesy of Mohegan Inspire]

A large-scale integrated resort, equipped with hotels, an arena, various facilities, and a water park, opened in Yeongjong-do, near Incheon International Airport, on Wednesday.

Mohegan, a U.S. casino and resort operator, partially opened its first integrated resort outside North America, Mohegan Inspire, on that day. Spanning a site as large as 461,661 square meters, equivalent to 64 football fields, it features a 5-star hotel housing a total of 1,275 rooms, the first domestic performance-specific arena, facilities for meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE), a multipurpose water park, and self-operated restaurants. The section of the resort that is open is the resort’s first-phase facilities, built at a cost of 2 trillion won ($1.5 billion), while an additional 4 trillion won will be invested by 2046 to make Mohegan Inspire the largest integrated resort in Northeast Asia.

The resort’s interior is filled with attractions, including a large light-emitting diode (LED) corridor where a blue-lit forest and landscape are displayed on both the walls and ceiling. Past the LED corridor is a large circular hall connecting all the facilities within the resort, with a 30-meter kinetic chandelier hanging in the center of this football field-sized hall. Various sculptures shaped like flowers and animals are placed throughout the resort, grabbing guests’ attention with their ever-changing colors and forms.

The Inspire Arena, the first specialized concert venue in Korea, boasts a massive capacity of up to 15,000 audience members. The distance from the farthest seat to the stage is approximately 75 meters, slightly shorter than similar-sized venues by about 10m. The height between the front and rear rows of seats also increased by more than 10 centimeters compared to existing performance facilities, ensuring an unobstructed view of the performance from any seat. The arena unveiled its grandeur during the Melon Music Awards 2023 (MMA 2023) earlier in the month.

The hotel operates three buildings themed on the forest, sea, and sun respectively. Facilities such as the indoor water park, which has a glass dome shape, and MICE facilities accommodating up to 4,000 people, are also in operation. Following the resort’s partial opening, a mall that includes shopping, dining, and entertainment, along with a foreigner-exclusive casino, will open in the first quarter of 2024, with outdoor experiential entertainment facilities, a large food court, and an indoor children’s play facility following in the second quarter.

Mohegan Inspire Entertainment Resort President Chen Si said the company’s plan is to incorporate “K-culture and K content” to attract tourists from around the world. Unveiling the company’s goal to create an entertainment resort with high-quality content, he pledged to grow with the local community and contribute to Korean tourism while expressing gratitude for the support from both the central and local governments, as well as communities in Korea.

“The domestic performance market stands at slightly over one trillion won, with an anticipated annual revenue of 50 billion won from the arena alone,” a company official overseeing the arena said. “We plan to reserve 60 percent of the arena’s annual capacity for concerts, 30 percent for sports competitions such as e-sports, and 10 percent for government and corporate events.