Solaire: Leader of the pack

Taken from Inside Asian Gaming (asgam.com)  - "In this exclusive interview Razon’s trusted lieutenant, Bloomberry President and COO Tom Arasi, discusses the addition of Solaire Resort North to the company’s portfolio, the evolution of the Philippines gaming market and plans to open a third resort in Cavite.

Below are a few snippets on Solaire Resort North

Andrew W Scott: Thanks for chatting with us Tom. Bloomberry recently opened Solaire Resort North in Quezon City. In a city like Manila with some 20 million-plus people, why specifically was Quezon City the right place for a second Solaire IR?

Tom Arasi: Quezon city has three million people with some of the best demographics in Metro Manila, ergo, in the Philippines. So, the catchment area surrounding Quezon City, with Quezon City as the epicenter, is northern Manila, the province of Bulacan and all the way up to Clark. And it extends all the way back down to Manila before you actually get to the more localized Solaire Entertainment City catchment. It’s a strategic location for attracting tourists, gamers and residents, and to bring to the city a vibrant venue for entertainment of all sorts.

Andrew W Scott: To what extent are the two Solaire properties connected from a management point of view and to what extent do they run independently of one another?

Tom Arasi: Well, we do have some shared management, but substantially both properties have their own management teams because, as it faces the customer, for the most part the properties have to run and serve all of the needs of each guest in their particular venue. There are certain aspects of the operation where we do operate them in concert. For example, back of house, shared services, finance, IT, surveillance, procurement, things like that. We run those jointly because it makes a lot of sense to do that, and it doesn’t directly touch the customer.

On the other hand, where things can touch the customer and be extremely beneficial to the customers at both properties, we do those in sync. We cross-promote together. We have a unified loyalty program. We do certain events together. So, the strengths of both properties are enabling us to give a cohesive, superior experience to the Solaire brand customer here in Metro Manila. And by the way, in doing this, we’ve doubled our footprint. We’re now two stores instead of one, so we’ve doubled our reach and we’ve doubled our brand power.

Below are a few snippets on VIP and Premium Mass

Andrew W Scott: We’ve seen a marked shift in market dynamics in Asia in recent years, particularly on the back of the Macau-based junkets collapsing. To what extent has that flowed through to Manila?

Tom Arasi: VIP generally in Chinese-related junkets like those in Macau are much lower in importance here than they were pre-pandemic, so that’s a parallel reality that we find ourselves in. That’s not bad in the grand scheme of things, because it has forced us all to diversify more away from the China market and away from VIP into mass.

Having said that, if you go onto our floor in Entertainment City, there are a lot of Chinese speaking people at that property and it seems that a lot of them before, during and after the pandemic actually moved to the Philippines. So, inbound Chinese business is moribund, it’s just not happening, but there is still a lot of Chinese speaking going on here, so it hasn’t gone away. If you really look at the end result, we’ve basically returned to pre-pandemic profitability on the back of a much higher proportion of mass business. That’s a really good thing every way you look at it. It’s better margins, we use our balance sheet less for credit, and it’s changed our marketing. I like to say we do more finesse marketing now, strategic marketing and less muscular marketing, which was more of that VIP style: heavy on airplane flights in, heavy on big comps, heavy on big gifts, heavy on teams of hosts. Now it’s more strategic marketing. It’s more data marketing, it’s more profiling and everything else. That’s a good thing for our business.

Andrew W Scott: Can you tell us a little bit about the premium mass market in the Philippines?

Tom Arasi: You know, the growth in premium mass recently and as we look towards the future is of course very important here, similar to how it’s changing the landscape in Macau and in Singapore. What’s a little bit different here so far – and part of the story in premium mass and a driver – is there’s been an outsized growth in premium mass play in EGMs, in slots. That’s also an excellent thing. International is playing more on slots – a good thing. There is more rated play compared to the past, which used to be more heavily skewed towards unrated play for the international. That is also a very good thing.

So, this change and this flip to more premium mass and EGMs and rated play really plays very well into our strengths here – people, service, facilities and strategic marketing.

Solaire Resort Entertainment City

Solaire Resort North

Published on July 31, 2024 11:09am, written by Andrew W Scott

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