Inside Asian Gaming

September 2014 inside asian gaming 57 Beyond City of Dreams , Melco Crown Entertainment’s other operations in Macau—the VIP-centric Altira Macau and the Mocha Clubs chain of slot parlors—are in decline. But that’s down more to marketplace dynamics than the abilities of Constance Hsu, who was appointed to head the former in December, after having led the latter since 2008. Net revenue at Altira Macau was US$181.6 million in Q2 2014, down 35% from the year-ago quarter. The property suffers from an isolated location on Taipa, occupying a no-man’s-land of sorts between the peninsula gaming hub consisting of MGM Macau, StarWorld, Wynn Macau and Grand Lisboa, and the Cotai resort district where The Venetian, Galaxy Macau and City of Dreams lie. Altira has been particularly hard-hit by the citywide slowdown in VIP gaming revenue, and its second-quarter performance was also adversely affected by bad luck, with a VIP rolling chip win rate of 2.7% versus 3% in Q2 2013. Rolling chip volume was $8.3 billion in the second quarter, down 30% year on year. For a property with little main-floor appeal, mass-market drop was, however, up 14% year on year in Q2, benefiting from rising visitation to Macau. Over at Mocha Clubs, meanwhile, net revenue was $36.5 million in the second quarter, down 2% year on year. That’s a creditable Constance Hsu General Manager Altira Macau performance, though, considering the number of gaming machines in operation across Mocha Clubs’ venues averaged approximately 1,200 in the quarter compared to around 2,000 in the comparable year-ago period, and implies a soaring net win per machine per day of $331 versus $207 in Q2 2013. Mocha Clubs has had to scale back in line with government regulations forcing slot parlors out of residential neighborhoods. The fact that the chain of coffee shop-style slot parlors has registered only a 2% decline in revenue after losing one-third of its machine count and in the face of intensifying competition from the slot floors of the city’s glitzy casinos is a testament to the yeoman job Ms Hsu did in positioning the operation to compete in a rapidly developing market prior to her departure in December. Ms Hsu had been with Mocha since it began in 2003, starting out as a financial controller and rising through management ranks quickly to become chief administrative officer. There, she oversaw finance, treasury, audit, legal compliance, procurement and human resources. In 2008, she was named president of Mocha, becoming one of only a handful of women to rise to the executive ranks in Macau’s gaming industry. It’s early days for Ms Hsu at Altira, and market dynamics are working against her, with the property set to become even more locationally disadvantaged as the second wave of megaresorts begins to open on Cotai come next year. Still, her new job is clearly a vote of confidence from Melco Crown in her track record of instilling in an operation the necessary focus on customer service and familiarity with local preferences to stand firm in the face of adversity. Crown Resorts and its Sri Lanka partner Ravi Wijeratne want to develop a US$350 million resort casino in the capital of Colombo. The government loves the idea. But political opposition to the terms of the deal, coupled with the hostility of the island nation’s influential Buddhist clergy, self-appointed guardians of its morals, has forced the administration of President Mahinda Rajapaksa to tone down its Ravi Wijeratne Chairman Rank Holdings (Pvt) Ltd