Inside Asian Gaming

IAG JAN 2023年1月 亞博匯 56 booked pre-COVID, so we haven’t really seen demand affected yet. It’s hard to get a gauge but if we’re looking at booking pace for the end of the year, it looks as strong as pre-pandemic, so we do believe it will come back. BB: Who do you see as your main regional competitors in the MICE space? PT: We have some pretty strong competition here in Singapore. There are two or three significant MICE facilities here and we are often co-bidding for business. I think we know that Australia has a strong MICE deployment in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth; Macau, while still closed, we assume will emerge and be very strong inMICE; and Bangkok has a good MICE facility. But a little bit like the other markets we discussed before, Singapore is unique for MICE because it often gets selected as the destination first and then the operators here are evaluated individually from there. BB: MBS announced a US$3.3 billion expansion project a few years back, although COVID-19 has caused some delays. Where is this project positioned right now? PT: We’re well into the room upgrades now for the US$1 billion reinvestment programme for our existing property which will include renovation of all rooms and suites in Towers 1 and 2 by the end of 2023. Along with the significant expansion of restaurants and public areas, most of that will be completed by halfway through 2024 for the existing IR. And that’s a very, very significant project for us because if you look at the 10- year history here, yes it’s been a very successful IR and very iconic offering, but we’ve never engaged in an elevation like this. It will feel to many of our customers like a completely new integrated resort when they come here. For the future, for IR 2, we’ve commenced some site preparation works next door. The main works, the proper part of that project, is yet to start. We’re still in some final discussions around configuration and programming and some of that is internal, some with government. The pandemic delay caused us to look at some elements of that product that we wanted to change. We feel we are very close to finalizing that now. As for a specific timeline on completion it’s hard to say because some of those elements will impact that. But the highlights are the IN FOCUS