Portions of the Philippines’ newest gaming megaresort were unveiled on Sunday with the “soft opening” of Melco Crown Entertainment’s City of Dreams Manila.
The project has general a lot of anticipation as the second of four destination casinos licensed for the government’s new 297-acre Entertainment City tourist district on Manila Bay.
Sunday’s partial debut was staged for the “local market,” as Melco Crown co-Chairman Lawrence Ho put it earlier this month, and was “not a media event.” A full formal opening is slated for February to coincide with Chinese New Year, which commences on February 19.
City of Dreams Manila is a joint venture between a Philippine-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.
The cost is pegged at US$1.3 billion at full build-out, with plans that call for three hotels—a Crown Towers, a Hyatt and Nobu’s first hotel in Asia—totaling more than 900 five-star rooms, plus a DreamWorks indoor theme park, a nightclub, dining and shopping and other attractions.
Plans for the casino include 365 table games and more than 3,000 slot machines and electronic table games.
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 priced at $2 billion.
Travellers International Hotel Group, owner of the country’s largest casino, Resorts World Manila, near the capital’s international airport, is developing the fourth resort, Bayshore City Resorts World, whose plans call for a 2018 opening at a total cost of $1.1 billion. Travellers is a partnership between Hong Kong-listed Genting Hong Kong and Philippine conglomerate Alliance Global Group.
U.S. casino giant Caesars Entertainment also has expressed interest in a Manila resort, though not in Entertainment but at a location adjoining the airport. The company has met with Philippine officials to discuss an investment of around US$1 billion, but Cristino Naguiat, who heads the government’s regulator, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, has said his “personal feeling” is that it’s unlikely the agency will issue any more licenses before the country’s president, Benigno Aquino, steps down in mid-2016.
“We only have one and a half years left, so I think we should let the next administration decide,” he recently told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
PAGCOR has said in the past that the government would wait for a “substantial completion” of Entertainment City before deciding on new licenses.
