Subic Bay to Get New Venezia Style Casino

Two foreign groups have expressed interest to put up more casinos in the Subic Bay Freeport after the closure of two gaming facilities in the economic zone.

Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority administrator and chief executive Armand Arreza yesterday told reporters in a briefing that a Hong Kong-based group that operates luxury cruise ships in the former British colony and a consortium developing new casinos in Macau wanted to invest in the Freeport.

“The Hong Kong-based operator of floating casinos is making an assessment now. They’ve been here twice before. Another group, which is a consortium of architectural firms, is also interested,” Arreza said.

He said casinos played an important role in bringing in foreign tourists into the Freeport. No company operates a casino in Subic now after Legenda and Subic Diamond shut down in May and September last year, respectively.

State-run Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., whose franchise was recently renewed, wants to lease three or four casinos in Subic.

“It all depends on who could bring in the tourists. What we want is a bigger market,” Arreza said.

Subic Diamond is re-opening in June under a new operator, Orient Pearl of Hong Kong. It was scheduled to re-open in time for the Chinese New Year in February but the registration papers of the operator were processed late.

“Orient Pearl will take care of the North Asia market, mainly Japan and Korea. I want someone to focus on Taiwan and Mainland China. This market should be taken cared of by the Hong Kong luxury cruise ship operator. Meanwhile, the Macau-based consortium of architectural firms will take care of [tourists from] Macau,” Arreza said.

Casinos account for bulk of the foreign tourist traffic in Subic. With the new casinos in the pipeline, Subic is assured of volume and more flights from at least three different areas.

When the casinos were still operating, Subic had two flights each from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea per week. The only planes flying in and out of Subic are owned by Federal Express, which is set to relocate its operations to China in 2008.

Arreza said the Hong Kong-based operator of luxury cruise ships planned to put up a floating casino docked in the Freeport for the time being pending the construction of a casino-hotel. The floating casino has 120 suites.

The Macau-based consortium, he added, might do a Venezia-type casino-hotel, which is one of the more popular casinos in Las Vegas, US.

Originally posted 2007-04-11 11:56:21. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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