Travellers International Hotel Group, the company behind the Philippines’ largest and most lucrative casino, has unveiled a first look at Resorts World Bayshore, the US$1.1 billion hotel casino it plans to build at the government-sponsored Entertainment City leisure district on Manila Bay.
Travellers said it expects to break ground on the first phase within 90 days and complete it by 2018. The complex, which covers a total of 31 hectares, will initially comprise three hotels, 800 rooms in all, two by the upscale Westin and Okura brands and a third developed by Genting Hong Kong, a Hong Kong-listed subsidiary of Malaysia’s Genting Group and the partner of Philippines conglomerate Alliance Global Group in Travellers.
The first phase also will feature a shopping mall and entertainment facilities and possibly a theme park. Around 2,800 hotel rooms are envisioned at full build-out, resulting in a property that will be about three times larger than the company’s current flagship, Resorts World Manila, which opened in 2009 near the capital’s international airport and is still the biggest casino in the Philippines market and its leading revenue-generator.
Resorts World Bayshore will be the last of four licensees to open at Entertainment City. The first, PSX-listed Bloomberry Resorts’ Solaire Resort & Casino, debuted last March. Melco Crown Entertainment’s City of Dreams Manila is slated to open the end of this year. Kazuo Okada’s Manila Bay Resorts is working toward a 2015 opening.
Bayshore originally was forecast to open in 2016, but Travellers decided to focus on expanding the airport complex instead. President Kingson Sian says he is not bothered by the delay. “When you open the latest, you would have seen what [the others] have so you can do something that they don’t have.”
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