Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | September 2013 32 The Asian Gaming 50 – 2013 and humanity. “What I’ve realized, which has always been my style, is that I manage people the way I want to be managed myself,” he once told The New York Times . A former president of Days Inn and Holiday Inn Worldwide, Mr Leven founded a company that developed and franchised the Microtel and Hawthorne Suites brands. He co-founded the Asian American Hotel Owners Association and helped grow it into the 9,300-member network it is today. “Respect for other individuals is the most important characteristic,” as he said in that Times interview. “Although cultures change, and the way people appear to be may be different, internally there are similar values in every single human being. Though these values may be executed differently, underneath, all human beings are basically the same: they want to be treated with respect, have personal freedom, an ability to be successful. I think those values transcend cultures.” He andMr Adelson both hail fromBoston and have known each other for decades. When Mr Adelson owned the Comdex computer trade show and Mr Leven was running Days Inn, they’d meet occasionally for dinner. He declined an offer to run the Sands when Mr Adelson bought the venerable Las Vegas Strip resort in 1988. But when LVS went public in 2004 he accepted a seat on the board of directors and served for about a year. When he finally joined the industry full-time it was at a point in life when most men of his age and accomplishments have settled into comfortable retirement. But he took a page from the advice he offers the many young professionals he teaches and mentors: to challenge themselves, to take the example of his success and seize every opportunity to try something new and unfamiliar. In his case, there hasn’t been a dull moment since and none on the horizon with the $2 billion-plus Parisian slowly taking shape on Cotai and EuroVegas on the drawing board in Spain—and who knows after that?—Miami if the political stars align, Vietnam should the ban on domestic gambling be lifted, and of course Japan in all likelihood. What’s certain for now is that he’s on board through 2014. Mr Adelson extended his contract last year. He was wise to do so. “It’s all about the total experience,” says Ted Chan of the appeal of City of Dreams to the coveted high-limit cash players known in Macau as the premium mass. It entails offering the right mix of hotel rooms, F&B, retail and perks, according to Mr Chan, and is something he has been striving to improve ever since he joined Melco Crown Entertainment’s flagship casino. The effort has helped increase the average length of stay of premium-mass customers at CoD to about twice the length of stay of its non-gaming customers, he says, and premium-mass revenue at CoD was the primary driver of Melco Crown’s consensus- beating second quarter results, along with higher group-wide VIP rolling chip volume and win rate and the company’s ongoing commitment to controlling costs. Melco Crown’s net revenue increased 38% year on year in the second quarter to US$1.3 billion (with CoD contributing $967 million), and adjusted EBITDA was up 62% to $330.1 million. In addition to CoD, which produced 91% of group adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter, Melco Crown also owns and operates the VIP-focused Altira Macau, which generated $41.4 million of adjusted EBITDA, and the slot club chainMocha Clubs, which generated $9.8 million. 19 Ted Chan Chief Operating Officer Melco Crown Entertainment Mr Chan became COO of Melco Crown in February last year. For two years prior to that, he had been co-COO, Gaming, while Nick Naples headed operations. Nick Naples left the company in conjunction with Mr Chan’s promotion, the culmination of a gradual assumption of all senior roles at the company by Chinese executives. “The young and innovative culture of this company is bolstered by our understanding of the customer,” says Mr Chan. “Because [CEO] Lawrence Ho and the teamare actually Chinese, and we grew up in this part of the world, we feel we understand the behavior of customers here better than anybody else.” It’s a differentiating factor, and for reasons both obvious and subtle, an important one. “For any strategy setup or marketing initiative the No. 1 goal is to know your customer,” says Mr Chan. “So we spend quite a lot of time understanding customer behavior. “For example,” he explains, “if someone from China comes into your property, [even] if you didn’t grow up in this part of the world and study the culture in China, you might be able to recognize that person comes from northern China, and from that conclude they like spicy food. But then what’s the difference between this guy and somebody from Thailand?” So a key part of Melco Crown’s mission to boost mass revenues is learning more about its customers’preferences.“We do a lot of data- mining exercises to find out who are the best customers, the middle customers and smaller customers, who we put into different tiers, so we’ll be able to align the right service to the right type of customer,”he says. Having identified the premium mass as the most lucrative segment, Melco Crown fine-tuned the offering at CoD to cultivate it. “I think everybody is actually looking at that segment and would like to replicate what we are doing,” he says. Mr Chan is a longstanding and trusted associate of Mr Ho’s. He worked with him first at Mocha Clubs, then left to take a role as CEO of an outside company, albeit one that worked in close cooperation with Melco Crown—Amax Holdings, a Hong Kong-listed junket aggregator that played a key role in sustaining Crown Macau (now Altira), Melco Crown’s first casino, when it opened. By November 2008, Mr Chan was back in the fold as president of Altira prior to assuming the co-COO position at City of Dreams in the summer of 2010.