Mohegan Inspire entertainment resort faces challenges before full opening

The main entrance to Mohegan Inspire Entertainment Resort on Incheon's Yeongjong Island / Courtesy of Inspire Entertainment Resort

By Lee Hae-rin

• Published Feb 15, 2024 5:26 PM KST
• Updated Feb 15, 2024 5:47 PM KST

The long-awaited first-phase grand opening of Mohegan Inspire Entertainment Resort on March 5 is just around the corner. The facility partly opened its doors last November.

Dubbed the "Korean version of Las Vegas," Inspire, Mohegan's first "entertainment integrated" resort outside North America, will be the largest integrated entertainment resort in Northeast Asia, once all four phases are complete.

The highly touted resort, a 2 trillion won ($1.49 billion) project, is already generating buzz and making headlines — even unwanted ones — ahead of its launch.

Guests say that its three five-star-rated hotel towers launched in the soft opening are more like a "bustling market" rather than a luxury hotel.

A Seoul-based office worker surnamed Jun, who spent the Lunar New Year holiday with her family including her 2-year-old child there last week, was among many who had to wait over an hour just to check in.

The Forest Tower, one of the resort's three hotel towers where she stayed, has only four elevators around one corner of the building to handle guests staying in hundreds of rooms, she said. Naturally, the area was overcrowded, especially during the check-in and checkout times.

"I learned from the reviews of other visitors that it gets even worse during checkout time, so I left at 9 a.m. the next day," she said.

Several online reviews echo her sentiments, sharing tips on quick check-ins and suggesting what to do while waiting to check in. Many noted that the three towers accommodating 1,275 rooms failed to handle the influx of guests with their current capacity, while some said they deserved a late checkout as compensation.

Jun was also surprised that the glass-domed indoor water park, Splash Bay, was not equipped with a locker room or showers. Visitors have to change into their swimsuits in their rooms and move around the facility in a shower robe, where they could occasionally run into visitors who come for concerts or restaurants outside the hotel.

"You have to wait in a long line again for the elevator to go back up, but this time, in a wet bathing suit and a robe," she said.

Many chose not to go to the water park due to such inconveniences, online reviews showed, while several said they would not return to the resort for another stay.

Meanwhile, visitors to the Inspire Arena, Korea's first indoor multipurpose performance venue that the entertainment complex boasts as its key feature, said they faced traffic and parking issues.

The 15,000-seat venue, which features a world-class audio system and a great viewing angle to the stage from anywhere in the auditorium, was presented by the resort as a "game changer" that will revolutionize the Korean entertainment and concert industry.

Starting with a solo concert by boy band SHINee's Taemin and the Melon Music Awards late last year, several K-pop artists, including boy band TVXQ and brother-sister duo AKMU, have held their concerts at the venue.

However, the concert-going experience at the prestigious venue was "horrid," according to several music fans.

A 25-year-old college student, surnamed Kim, barely made it to the AKMU concert last month because it took her over an hour to park.

"I left Seoul more than two hours before the show to make it on time, but the congestion around the resort area was unbelievable. The roads around the entrance were so packed that it already looked like a parking lot," she said.

While sprinting to the concert hall after parking, she was surprised to run into guests in their bathing suits and shower robes who were heading to the water park. The show started 20 minutes later to wait for those like Kim who were delayed by the parking, but some had to miss the first parts of the show or couldn't make it on time at all.

The venue is on track to host more events next month, including a K-pop concert for the local community on March 2 and two days of concerts by U.S. pop-rock band Maroon 5 on March 8 and 9, as well as the World Table Tennis Champions 2024 between March 27 and 31.

Several hospitality insiders say the giant resort created a labor conundrum in the industrial ecosystem.

"Korea has an acute scarcity of talent in the resort industry … Inspire Resort, with its massive hiring, took a lot of experienced workers from other resorts by offering them unreasonable pay raises and higher positions," an employee at another resort said.

Small and medium-sized resorts are especially vulnerable to the competition, while the industry has still not recovered from the labor shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the official added.

The loss of skilled labor is also fatal to casino resorts, as it leads to leakage of trade secrets and decades of accumulated knowledge.

"Customer networking and promotion know-how are core to the casino business," another industry insider said.

"Such indiscreet efflux of labor could leak trade secrets of the foreign-only casino businesses, disturb the market and eventually damage the competitiveness of the whole industry," the official said, calling for state-led guidelines to foster the casino industry.

With several challenges at stake, the mega-resort said it is open to customer feedback.

"We're still at a soft opening stage, and we are collecting feedback and reports of inconvenience from guests to improve our service and repair facilities," an Inspire Resort official said.

For example, the resort is working with local police and navigation services to offer alternative routes, as well as to provide shuttle bus services to and from the airport, to deal with the parking issue, she added.

"With a grand opening scheduled for March, the resort will do its utmost to improve its service and present the best experience to our guests," the official said.