Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | May 2012 56 INSIGHTS experience of the needs of Asian customers. In addition to that, they of course opened the MGM Grand Macau in 2007, and we have actually become the beneficiary of all the knowledge they have gained through those operations. So we are very comfortable with MGM and there has been great teamwork with them. And it has not actually just been a good partnership for us. MGM has also been a good partner for Vietnam. They have reached out to a number of colleges and universities in Vietnam, and offered curriculum and training for young Vietnamese students to come and get a foothold in our industry. In addition to that career development—and I know this from my own experience at MGM— is something very important to MGM. In my 20-year history there, I saw people go from the front desk to become presidents of properties, and there will be tremendous career development opportunities for Vietnamese people, particularly as we are about to hire 2,000 such people for the property. What do you expect will be the major source markets for visitors to Ho Tram? We are looking at being a Pan-Asian attraction. If you look at certain other jurisdictions, whether it be Macau or Singapore, it tends to be a more focused demographic or geography that are actually going to those properties. We are looking for a far broader appeal, both for the non-gaming and the gaming. On the gaming side, we would expect premium players to come from places such as Mainland China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, and India as well. I also mentioned before the 6 million foreign tourists that come to Vietnam on an annual basis. In addition to that, there are 3.5 million Vietnamese people who live overseas with foreign passports, and who tend to come in very large numbers around the Lunar New Year. And there is a very large number of expatriates living in Vietnamwho right now are frequenting a limited number of slot parlors attached to four- or five-star hotels, that have a very high propensity to game, and we would see that we capture a large amount of that market. In terms of allocation of tables, have you gone very much towards the Asian preference for baccarat? Very much so, and that is again sitting down with MGM, their experience in Macau, their experience in talking to their current international marketing agents, we are skewing it without a doubt towards that audience. There’s been lots of talk of competing gaming projects in Vietnam. There’s been some talk of a project involving Michael Jackson’s father, JoeJackson. “There are plenty of markets out there that are looking to develop their markets and enable casinos to open, but as far as one actually opening with a major US brand over the next five years, we believe we are the only one.” The 13,600 square meters of gaming space in phase one consists of 90 tables and 500 electronic gaming machines.