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Donaco International owns and runs casinos in Southeast Asia, mostly serving players who cross the border from nearby countries.
Donaco International is a small casino company. It owns two casinos in Southeast Asia: one in northern Vietnam right on the border with China, and one in Cambodia near the Thai border. These are not flashy Las Vegas resorts. They are border casinos, built to catch gamblers from neighboring countries who can't easily gamble at home.
The Vietnam property, called Aristo International Hotel, sits near Lao Cai and draws mostly Chinese players who walk across the border. Vietnam itself doesn't allow its own citizens to gamble in these casinos, so the whole business depends on foreign visitors coming to play. The Cambodia property, Star Vegas, sits in Poipet near the Thai border and serves mostly Thai customers. In both cases, Donaco is essentially renting out space and games to people from a richer neighboring country who want to gamble somewhere cheap and close. The money comes from the house edge — the small statistical advantage every casino holds on table games and slot machines. Donaco earns from gaming tables, slot machines, and hotel rooms, with gambling doing the heavy lifting. Both properties are small players in the global casino world, and their fortunes rise and fall with border traffic, regional politics, and crackdowns on cross-border gambling.
The business has had a rough ride. Star Vegas was at the center of a legal fight with a Thai partner over control of the casino, and Donaco spent years in disputes and debt trouble. More recently, it has worked to clean up its balance sheet and improve the properties. The core risk is simple: a casino whose customers must cross a border is hostage to events on that border — visa rules, crackdowns, or a pandemic that shuts crossings entirely, as happened in 2020.
Saved answer · last researched 27 Oct 2026