HONG KONG: A Hong Kong tycoon has placed the biggest ever order for Rolls-Royce cars, agreeing to buy 30 Phantoms to chauffeur guests at a luxury resort he’s building in the global gambling capital of Macau.

Stephen Hung’s $20 million purchase surpasses the 14 Phantoms bought by Hong Kong’s Peninsula Hotel in 2006. Hung and Rolls-Royce executives signed the deal on Tuesday at the company’s Goodwood factory in England.

The Extended Wheelbase Phantoms will be used for guests at Hung’s “ultra-luxury” Louis XIII hotel, which is scheduled to open in early 2016. Rolls-Royce said two of the cars will be the most expensive Phantoms ever commissioned, complete with “gold-plated accents” on the outside and interior.

Louis XIII Holdings. said it will pay the automaker a $2m deposit, $3m more by the end of the year and the remaining $15m when the cars are delivered in the first half of 2016. The Phantom’s base price in Britain is about £450,000 ($734,000) including taxes, a company spokesman said, though prices vary by market and many buyers order custom features that push prices much higher.

Customers have been known to spend more than $1m on bespoke models. With casino revenues of $45 billion last year, Macau is the world’s most lucrative gambling market, outpacing the Las Vegas Strip seven times over.

After authorities ended a casino monopoly a decade ago, newly wealthy mainland Chinese high rollers started pouring in to wager at glitzy new resorts built by foreign operators such as Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Wynn Resorts.

However, the boom is beginning to fade as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s corruption crackdown starts to bite, putting a dampener on lavish spending by officials and other wealthy Chinese.

Published in Dawn, September 18th , 2014