Travellers International Holdings Inc, the joint venture controlled by Genting Bhd and the Philippines’ Alliance Global Group, remains confident that the Philippines will continue to see robust returns, even as Macau continues its tailspin amidst China’s crackdown against corruption.
In an interview last week, Alliance Global Chairman Andrew Tan spoke about the status of the Philippine’s gambling industry, emphasizing that it would remain insulated from Macau’s current woes because the former is catering to a different market.
Tan said the Philippines isn’t as reliant on the high-roller segment as Macau, relying more on the region’s growing mass-market segment.
“We don’t have [the VIP] segment of the market here and I think that ultra-high rollers now are thinning out that’s why their [Macau] growth has been slow last year,” Tan said.
Instead, the Philippines’ strategy of attracting what Tan described as “regular customers” could be more than enough to keep the country’s gambling industry as healthy as it can be. The Philippines plans to build a stout tourism infrastructure that will be heavily complemented by the gambling industry.
“That traveler market is still growing with so many hotels being built now,” Tan pointed out. “In the industry, all of us have been building quite a number of hotels, giving a lot of room and opportunity for more tourists to come,” he added.
Tan’s Alliance Global, which co-owns Resorts World Manila with Genting, is expected to open its second integrated resort and casino in the country, Resorts World Bayshore, in the last quarter of 2018. That will bring the number of resorts in PAGCOR’s Entertainment City to three, joining Bloomberry Resorts’ Solaire Hotel and Casino and Melco Crown Philippines’ City of Dreams Manila. The fourth resort, Kazuo Okada’s Manila Bay Resorts, is expected to open this year.
