Philippine casino developer Bloomberry Resorts Corp aims to maintain the “leading” market position of its first and flagship property Solaire Resort & Casino at Entertainment City Manila, while continuing to ramp up its newer venue Solaire Resort North at nearby Quezon City.
That is according to the group’s president and chief operating officer, Greg Hawkins, during a Wednesday fireside chat with GGRAsia at the industry trade show and conference Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia @ the Philippines 2025.
Mr Hawkins (pictured left) told Michael Grimes (pictured right), a principal at GGRAsia: “We’ve got three verticals which are driving earnings in the company: Solaire Entertainment City; Solaire North in Quezon city, and our online [gaming] business. Each of those are critically important to our growth over the next 18 months.”
The Entertainment City land-based property opened in 2013. In May last year, the group launched its US$1.0-billion Solaire Resort North.
Mr Hawkins stressed that while investing to create high-quality properties was vital for brand value, refreshment and refurbishment of infrastructure was equally important.
The executive – the opening president of City of Dreams in Macau and a veteran in senior roles in the Australian market – joined the Bloomberry group in December 2024.
He stated: “I think the commitment to what we would call ‘maintenance capex’ is a culture within the organisation that I recognised quite quickly.”
“Our chairman [Enrique Razon], who is very committed to the positioning of both of our properties, really has driven a culture of maintenance and a quality of maintenance and presentation,” added Mr Hawkins.
Referring to the original Solaire property, he also remarked: “We need to make sure its positioning is as strong as ever.”
“We need to be adaptive on our strategies, but ensure that sort of brand profile continues,” along with “protection of its market share,” he added. “It’s still the leading property in the jurisdiction.”
Solaire North ramp, technology investment
Mr Hawkins added: “Solaire North – almost two years old – is still in a broader EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, and amortisation] ramp up stage, but progressing positively.”
“But we need to keep that moving, and we need to keep adapting our strategies to what is much more of a localised market” on that site, said the Bloomberry senior executive.
Referring to Wednesday comments by Alejandro Tengco, chairman and chief executive of the country’s gaming regulator, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (Pagcor), at the morning keynote for the conference, Mr Hawkins noted: “Online is a very significant growing sector in the jurisdiction.”
Bloomberry had a soft launch in June for its online-gaming offer called MegaFUNalo. It complemented the group’s remote-gaming offer “Solaire Online” delivered via its land-based operations, the latter featuring live casino games.
The Bloomberry COO noted: “The concept of video gaming enables your brand to be taken to other markets [segments] in different ways.”
For the traditional live gaming segment, the company has “significant capital commitment” in adopting ‘smart’ table technology, he noted.
“We’re along that journey of installation. We know what can come out of that, in terms of protection of the assets, as well as our ability to market more accurately and rate [patrons] more accurately as well,” explained Mr Hawkins.
As the Philippines is known as a strong market for slot machines, the company also has ongoing commitments to investing in the segment, including trial of new products, Mr Hawkins highlighted.
“There’s … an ongoing commitment to allocating appropriate amounts of capital to the slot machine side of the business each year,” he stated.
“We’re happy to be, to some extent, a bit of a test bed for some of the manufacturers. We have those types of relationships [whereby] if they want to launch new product or trial new product at our sites, we’re very much open to that,” he added.
