Posted on October 17, 2012 10:29:42 PM
[ BusinessWorld Online ]
THE PLANNED Solaire Manila hotel and
casino complex by listed Bloomberry Resorts Corp. aims to take advantage of the
robust local gaming environment and ramp up the number of high-end visitors to
the Manila Bay development in the next two years, an official said yesterday.
“Frankly, our strategy is to ramp up
first the VIP (Very Important Person) business market before we introduce our
high-premium customers. This is going to be the first time in a large way that
foreign business customers are going to be coming to Manila, and we want them
to come back again and again,” Bradley Stone, president of Solaire Manila
manager Global Gaming Asset Management LLC, said in a briefing in Makati City
yesterday.
“We’re going to be 55% mass market,
and about 45% VIP business on a normalized year, by around 2014. Our
projections are very strong but defensible,” Mr. Stone said.
At present, the VIP market among
locally operated casinos accounts for only a small percentage of the overall
gaming industry, another official said.
“There are VIP players here, but they
are only a few, the mass market still accounts for a majority of gaming. I
can’t say for certain how much, but I would say VIP would only be around 12%,
even less,” Donato C. Almeda, Bloomberry director, said in a separate
interview.
“The market locally will always be
there. But at the end of the day, we have to grab the chance to tap the
international market, which will be the upside to this project,” Mr. Almeda
added.
Bloomberry, which debuted on the local
bourse early this year via back-door listing, is currently building the
$1-billion, five-star Solaire Manila in the Bagong Nayong Pilipino
Entertainment City in Parañaque.
Aside from Bloomberry, three other
casino-resort developers, namely Travellers International Hotel Group, Inc.;
the SM Consortium; and Tiger Resorts Leisure and Entertainment, Inc., have also
been authorized by the government to build their respective gaming projects in
Entertainment City.
The first phase of Solaire Manila,
which will open next March, will feature an 11-storey, 500-room hotel atop a
three-level podium, as well as a 10-storey parking building all to be built on
an 8.3-hectare property. The casino and gaming areas alone are expected to
feature 1,200 slot machines and occupy some 18,500 square meters.
In addition, two areas roughly
measuring a combined eight hectares, have already been allotted for future
expansion purposes.
“Where gaming is concerned, there is a
void that needs to be filled for the huge world gaming market, particularly by
offering an alternative for the large and growing Southeast Asian market,”
Enrique K. Razon, Jr., Bloomberry chairman and president, said in a statement
yesterday.
Bloomberry shares plunged by 7.21% or
P1.04 to P13.38 yesterday from P14.42 last Tuesday. -- Franz Jonathan G. de la
Fuente
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