A local partner in the Belle Grande Manila Bay casino project in the Philippines claims that hotel brands from Melco Crown’s City of Dreams resort in Macau could be brought into the project.
Melco Crown is an investor in Belle Grande and its planned operator. Its hotel inventory in Macau consists of the 791-room Grand Hyatt Macau, the 300-room Crown Towers, the 300-room Hard Rock Hotel and the 216-room own-brand Altira Macau Hotel.
“Belle Grande will be two to three hotel brands because we have more than 900 rooms,” Willy Ocier, vice chairman of Belle Corp, said. Belle Corp is a gaming and leisure development unit of Philippine mall and banking conglomerate SM Investments Corp. It controls the US$150m plot occupied by Belle Grande.
“The Belle Grande hotels are five and six-star brands. Solaire is five and six-stars so we cannot be less than that,” added Ocier, referring to a rival Manila casino venue that had its first phase opening in March.
The venue is due to open in the third quarter of 2014.
Solaire Resort nd Casino is the first of four properties in a new mini-Las Vegas-style casino zone for the Philippines capital known as Entertainment City.
The Philippine gaming regulator Pagcor claims that gambling revenues in the country could grow from US$1.3bn in 2011 to at least US$10bn by 2017, with most of the growth from the four new resorts at Entertainment City.
