Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming June 2014 14 On the domestic marketing, what’s the plan? Obviously, you’re looking closely at Resorts World Manila and Solaire and how they’re developing their offering. This is the part where you’ve got to do Manila in Manila, and I don’t want to talk too much about what we’re talking about and thinking about. Because it’s quite different from what the other guys are doing in that they’ve had the chance to get their offerings right. But locals are very much interested in SMS offers and things like that. Loyalty’s going to be a big thing for us. You’ve got to get the food offering right as well for the locals. Very price- sensitive. Transportation needs to be smooth for them. They need to be able to drop off if they have a driver, there needs to be car parking for people who drive in. In terms of the marketing side of things I think there’s a lot of people heading to Manila trying to do Macau in Manila, like people tried to do Vegas in Macau, and it took a long time for people to change their ideas and perceptions and thinking toward what would be more appropriate and appealing to the market that we’re operating in. I’m going to Manila with the mindset that I‘ve learned a lot in Macau, I’ve learned a lot about Chinese customers, I’ve learned a lot about gaming. But in terms of copying and pasting the Macau model in Manila, absolutely not. It’s a very different marketplace. The people and culture are very, very different. I don’t want to give away all our tricks, but I think that’s the key. It’s to look at the Filipino culture and the people and what appeals to them and tailor your offering accordingly. In that regard, what’s the thinking in terms of game mix and pricing? The market determines the game mix. Really. Duo Fu Duo Cai from SHFL (now Bally) is doing great here, does great everywhere. You can’t try to stop the tide from coming in. Aristocrat does very well, IGT and WMS reasonably strong here as well, far stronger than they are in Macau. Electronic table games are taking off. When you put your game mix out there you might try a lot of stuff in the beginning. I know City of Dreams is going to do that. It’s a good strategy. And the market determines what you buy more of. It’s really that simple. You’ve got high occupancy, high utilization, good win per unit per day, you put more of that on the floor, you take off the rubbish stuff. I’m not concerned about that at all. The people are going to tell us what to buy. The Philippines has been the subject of some conflicting forecasts lately, as you know. Resorts World Manila appeared to break the mold when it opened, unlocking what looked like a massive amount of untapped demand. Then Solaire came along, and its performance, at least in the early going, has skeptics wondering about the depth of the domestic market. At G2E Asia last month we heard some experts talking about saturation, high- level industry executives among them. Then there’s PAGCOR, which has a more optimistic take looking out over the next five years or so. Where does Tiger come down on this? Everyone always doubted the locals market in terms of supporting two properties. I don’t think it’s limitless, but the infrastructure’s going to geographically grow the market substantially; and when Entertainment City gets some momentum after City of Dreams opens, and then we open, there are three properties within rough proximity. People from Davao and the outer islands and places like that, they’re going to be making trips a lot more regularly, because there’s a lot more fun here. How big is the domestic market? It won’t keep growing in a linear fashion with supply, I don’t think. Things are going to get very competitive. The reinvestment rates already at Resorts World and Solaire are very high even by Macau standards. I don’t want to go into too much detail in terms of our marketing strategy. We want to keep our cards pretty close to our chest until we actually get open. But we’re looking at not only being competitive with reinvestment, with points and all that kind of stuff, but certainly with how can we make the guest experience memorable every time they visit us, and in terms of personally engaging with the customer so that there’s an emotional connection with their experience here that they perhaps wouldn’t get at the other properties. And, again, when the infrastructure improves I think the domestic market will be bigger and bigger as well. The numbers at Solaire have been encouraging. They’ve slowly built up. Slots look really good. Their slots are competing with Resorts World now. It’s taken a while. But they’re pretty much neck and neck. In terms of win? Monthly revenue, yeah. Tables have been a little more challenging. The high roller and junket segments have been quite volatile. And low volumes can result in issues of high volatility because you don’t have the law of large numbers to even those things out. So, you know, it’s really a topsy-turvy ride. I don’t want to make too many analogies with Macau. What happened on Cotai, Venetian did pretty well even on its own, but when you “There are plenty of positive things about the project and about the chairman and his investments in the Philippines that people don’t even know about. He’s got a factory here for his Aruze company. There are game designers as well. He’s got a commitment to the Philippines regardless of the casino. He’s not just here to run a casino. He’s been employing hundreds of people for several years now.” Cover Story