Inside Asian Gaming

June 2014 inside asian gaming 7 at 600,000, 700,000, 800,000 Chinese tourists. Then the big game changer—and this is the somewhere between a million- and a billion-dollar question—is if we can get landing visas or visas on arrival in Manila for Chinese. Absolute game-changer. Currently, you need to apply for a visa before you travel to the Philippines and it takes about seven days to process. So it’s a little bit of a pain. My wife and I, she’s Chinese, we didn’t travel to the Philippines until last year. We’ve been to Thailand 15, 20 times. You can get a visa on arrival there. So in terms of convenience and the perception of the whole process it’s a massive thing. If you get visa on arrival Chinese people can go to Manila every weekend if they wanted. They can stay for 30 days probably. It’ll be a lot easier to go to Manila than it will to go to Macau. And when that starts to sink in it’s a phenomenal game-changer for us. I mean, junkets, just think about junkets. They’re going to say, “Hey, you know, we’re chartering a plane, we’re heading off on Friday, why don’t you come down for the weekend?” I don’t have to go through the process, go and get my passport, get my secretary to go down to the consulate, pay some money, all that hassle. So the potential upside is incredible. We’re modeling everything on not getting landing visas. But it’s in everyone’s interest, including the economy of the Philippines. And certainly the Andrew Tans and K.T. Lims and Ricky Razons and Henry Sy and Lawrence Ho, they’re not going to be against pushing through something like landing visas. It helps all of us and helps tourism in the Philippines as well, I mean, massively. When is this expected to come about? I don’t know. We certainly have had discussions with the regulators about it. We’ve had discussions internally at the highest levels within our company. There are some geopolitical things going on in the whole of Southeast Asia. That said, the whole of the world is looking for Chinese tourism to save them in terms of creating some revenues and some taxation. I think it’s a path that everyone’s sort of moving toward. It’s a question of timing really. Solaire has targeted the Chinese high end with mixed results. Is that a concern? I don’t know if I want to comment on the mistakes they made. I’d rather focus on how we’re aiming to do things, and how I think that’s the right way of doing things. They were a little one-dimensional when they opened. Not that many restaurants. One Chinese restaurant and one noodle joint in the casino. For Chinese, food is critical. You know this. And one restaurant’s just not going to cut it. There was very little retail. So people who took their wives or girlfriends, there was nothing for them to do. The spa didn’t open. So what are they going to do? They sit around and go, “Take me to Hong Kong.” or “Take me home, Daddy.” I don’t think they had a big network. We’re aiming on, focusing on Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam. We really want to have people with relationships in all of those markets and have a super-strong international marketing team. We’re absolutely gunning for that. So junkets will play a big role? Junkets are key. We’ve been talking with junkets for the six months I’ve been here. We want to get some feedback: We’ve been trying to build those relationships for more than 18 months, really, two years out. And I think with the junkets the relationship is key. The other stuff is going to fall into place. We’ve got 15% tax on junket tables. Now it’s 5%, but you pay the corporate tax, it works out the same. Macau is 39%. So we’re going to be able to offer better programs than you can in Macau. When the road infrastructure is completed, which is going to be before we open, it’s going to be fine. The big thing is, I expect, when Lawrence Ho opens his doors in Manila, he’s the son of Doctor Ho, who’s a legend in China, I think that’s going “The chairman is putting a property together that is truly an integrated resort that’s going to stand shoulder to shoulder with anything in Asia or the world. I think we’re going to be the flagship of the area. It’s going to grow the domestic market.” Matt Hurst Cover Story