Inside Asian Gaming

IAG JAN 2023年1月 亞博匯 48 BB: The pandemic came along at an interesting time for you personally, having only joined MBS a few months earlier. How did you handle that initial period? PT: I joined [MBS] in November 2019 so I had four months of normal and then a very interesting time. And this elevation project that we are currently on, that was one of the things I came here to do, so one minute we were here designing these hotel rooms and looking at coffee machines and glasses, the next we were in a pandemic taskforce trying to manage our way through that. We were able to do both of those activities through the pandemic, but there was so much time devoted to ensuring we could reopen safely and had our recovery plan in place. Nobody had any real experience in doing that and I hope not to do it again. BB: You’ve since been promoted to Chief Operating Officer following the departure of Andrew MacDonald in mid- 2021. How have you found the transition and taking on greater responsibility? PT: Yeah, well I came as the non-gaming guy overseeing all of the non-gaming touchpoints including hotel, retail, food and beverage, shared service and so on. Following Andrew’s departure, we had a lot of discussions around structure. Of course, whilst I have been a non-gaming guy for almost all but two or three years of my career, that time has been spent in IRs working very closely with the gaming environment. I’m very familiar with gaming and the marketing activities around gaming operations, so we determined that I would be able to take that on, which has been very exciting. And I’ve loved it. I think taking on some of that core gaming responsibility has been fantastic, but also part of my focus has been to flowsome level of hospitality as well into that experience for our customers. We really see our customers as very wholistic. Nobody is coming here just for a singular experience. They are coming here for an IR experience, so we know that they are going to hit various touchpoints along the way across all of our amenities. Part of the advantage of having a guy like me oversee that journey is I can make sure the experience is consistent. IN FOCUS