Melco Crown Entertainment’s Manila super-resort will hold a soft opening on December 14.
City of Dreams Manila, the second of four destination casinos licensed for the Philippine government’s new Entertainment City tourist district, will stage the opening for the “local market,” said Melco Crown co-Chairman Lawrence Ho. It will not be “not a media event,” he said.
The resort, priced at US$1.3 billion at full build-out, will look to formally launch its first phase in February, Ho said, likely timed to coincide with Chinese New Year, which commences next year on February 19.
City of Dreams Manila is a joint venture between a PSX-listed subsidiary of Melco Crown—which operates two casinos in Macau and is opening a third in the Chinese gambling hub next year—and a local subsidiary of Philippine billionaire Henry Sy’s retail and property conglomerate SM.
Current plans allocate to the Melco subsidiary all the resort’s profits from hotel and non-gaming operations and call for a split of gaming revenue with its partner.
Entertainment City’s first licensee, Solaire Resort & Casino, opened in March 2013 at a cost of $750 million and recently expanded with more than 300 new suites and 66 additional VIP gaming tables. The property is owned by PSX-listed Bloomberry Resorts.
A Philippine subsidiary of Japanese machine gaming tycoon Kazuo Okada is slated to open the district’s third resort in phases beginning in 2016. Manila Bay Resorts, as it’s called, is pegged at $2 billion at full build-out.
Travellers International Hotel Group, owners of the country’s largest casino, Resorts World Manila, near the capital’s international airport, are developing the fourth Entertainment City, Bayshore City Resorts World. Plans call for a 2018 opening at a total cost of $1.1 billion. Travellers is a partnership between HKSE-listed Genting Hong Kong and Philippine conglomerate Alliance Global Group.
