Philippine Hope

Following a post-Covid boom unseen in the rest of Asia, tough times have arrived in Manila’s Entertainment City. While Philippine economic growth hums along in the 5-6 percent range, gaming revenue at the bayfront casino hub fell 5 percent last year and, according to Morgan Stanley, by about 35 percent year-on-year in this year’s first quarter amid disappointing tourism numbers and booming online gaming.

Melco International wants to sell its City of Dreams Manila operation but can’t find a buyer, not even its landlord Belle Corp., gaming arm of the Sy family’s multibillion-dollar SM empire. Gross gaming revenue at COD Manila fell to US$109 million, down 13 percent year on year in the first quarter. Adjusted EBITDA dropped 21 percent to US$30 million.

Market leader Solaire’s longtime president and COO, Thomas Arasi, retired in December, ahead of the Bloomberry Resorts’ flagship IR reporting revenue falling short of the US$1 billion mark, down 9 percent to PHP53.2 billion (US$916 million at year-end exchange rates), and EBITDA dropping 17 percent. In this year’s first quarter, GGR tumbled another 17 percent and EBITDA cascaded 35 percent.

At neighboring Okada Manila, GGR fell by 22 percent last year and another 11 percent in Q1 2025. Sandwiched between the two Entertainment City giants, billionaire Tan family-controlled MegaWorld’s Westside City remains unfinished as casino operator LET, the non-junket rump of Macau’s Suncity Group, pushes back its estimated completion date amid apparent funding shortfalls.

On the bright side, Bloomberry’s corporate 2024 GGR rose 6 percent and net revenue increased 10 percent year on year, with further first quarter bumps of 14 percent and 15 percent, respectively. Those gains are thanks to Solaire North, an urban integrated resort in the midst of Metro Manila’s bustling Quezon City that celebrated its first anniversary on May 25.

“Solaire North has kept BLOOM afloat in terms of GGR growth despite the challenging environment for casinos,” CLSA analyst Amos Ong writes. “We expect this to continue as the property attracts more players from Clark and cities north of Metro Manila such as Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas and Valenzuela.”

New, Improved Winning Formula

Solaire North highlights the revised winning formula for Philippine land-based casinos in a market flush with legalized online gaming: Identify an underserved area and offer a superior product. Hann Resorts in Clark, a weekend retreat with an international airport 62 miles north of Metro Manila, has made this strategy work spectacularly as it expands relentlessly. Rather than buy COD Manila operations, Belle plans to build an IR in Clark.

“The provincial areas represent extraordinary untapped potential,” PH Resorts COO Jose Angel Sueiro says. “Unlike saturated Metro Manila, these provincial markets present lower competition in gaming and entertainment experiences, with significant demographic advantages.”

PH Resorts has been working to develop a beachfront casino resort in Macatan on Cebu, a 90-minute flight south from Manila. The Cebu City metropolitan area in the Visayas region is the Philippines’ second or third largest, depending on who’s counting, with well over 1 million residents and a hub for business and tourism in the southern half of the archipelago.

Sueiro says a PH Macatan project would complement NuStar Resort and Casino that opened in 2022. MegaWorld, which owns Newport World Resorts—the former Resorts World Manila—plans to break ground next year on its own Macatan IR. However, CLSA believes that GGR growth at NuStar will derive solely from online gaming, not its land-based operations.

Closer to Home

Bloomberry found an underserved area less than 14 miles from its Entertainment City flagship. Solaire North represents a great leap forward for Quezon City, the largest Metro Manila municipality with 3 million residents that’s a center for entertainment and media.

The US$1 billion property makes a spectacular opening statement to visitors with towering glass tube sculpture The Mangrove, which artist Nikolas Weinstein claims is the world’s largest installation of its kind, rising more than 88 feet alongside escalators accessing the main casino floors.

Solaire North extends 38 stories high and features 2,670 electronic gaming machines and 163 tables on four levels, 526 hotel guest rooms, 14 food and beverage outlets, a column-free dividable ballroom with banquet seating for 1,350, a swimming pool with kids park and a 15,000-square-foot wellness area including salon, spa, gym and even a pickleball court. A rival casino operator in northern Metro Manila requesting anonymity laments, “They’re killing us.”

In seven months and one week of operations last year, Solaire North garnered PHP8.4 billion (US$ 15 million) in GGR, then PHP4.6 billion (US$8.2) in the first quarter of 2025, up 29 percent sequentially. First-quarter property EBITDA reached PHP1.1 billion (US$2 million), matching its total for the final two quarters of last year. In the first three months of 2025, Solaire North turned its first quarterly operating profit, PHP1.9 billion (US$3.2 million), 14 percent more than that of Solaire Entertainment City, which had more than double the revenue.

Flying Right

“We’re satisfied with the property’s trajectory,” Solaire North’s opening day COO Greg Hawkins told GGB’s sister publication iGB in a recent interview. “Now it’s about continuing that trajectory.” Bloomberry’s chairman and CEO, Enrique Razon Jr., forecasts full ramp-up at Solaire North will take two years.

“Solaire North should continue to ramp up and stabilize above 50 percent of (Solaire) Entertainment City EBITDA by 2026-27,” Morgan Stanley Asia Analyst Praveen Choudhary forecasts.

“The northern Metro Manila market is what drives the property,” Hawkins says, noting that 3 million people live within six miles of the IR. Though Solaire North is just 13-odd miles from Solaire Entertainment City, that journey routinely takes more than an hour by road. That’s a disincentive for people from Quezon City and its vicinity to regularly visit the Manila Bay casino hub.

Solaire North is “uniquely located” within northern Metro Manila, according to Hawkins. The resort fronts on EDSA, Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, the capital region’s key north-south artery carrying more than 400,000 vehicles daily. Three huge shopping malls lie adjacent: Ayala Land’s Trinoma (Triangle North of Manila) and Vertis North to serve Ayala’s Vertis North township development and SM North EDSA, bringing thousands of consumers daily to Solaire North’s doorstep.

The three malls also provide thousands of parking spaces. Solaire North itself has 1,500 parking spaces that Hawkins says are full on weekends, so the resort has leased an additional 1,000 spaces from its neighbors.

Manila’s Metro Rapid Transit (MRT) yellow trains run above EDSA, with two stops bracketing Solaire North. Train lines are expanding to serve the capital district’s 13.5 million inhabitants, with a new line running north from Quezon City beginning service late this year. Long-range plans include a second MRT line and a Manila subway, with Quezon City as a connecting point for those lines and the city’s light rail.

Something Old, Something New

Solaire North has brought some features from Entertainment City, notably signature restaurants Finestra (Italian), Yakumi (Japanese) and Red Lantern (Chinese), while catering to a market that projects as less international, more mass-focused and more family-oriented. The food court at Solaire North has been supersized to nearly 600 seats with more choices at competitive prices.

Room product follows the high standards of the Solaire flagship.

Entry-level rooms, 85 percent of the tower’s total, measure a generous 452 square feet with luxurious yet comfortable furnishings, separate shower and bathtub plus designer amenities. The resort has more than a dozen suites named for the rungs of Solaire’s customer rewards ladder, which covers both properties. Top-level suites reserved for VIPs on the highest lodging floors have three bedrooms, dining rooms seating 10 and, in the premier Diamond Suite, a piano.

The year-old resort has introduced features that could well migrate to Solaire Entertainment City. Philippine restaurant Manyaman presents updated and upgraded specialties from Pampanga, a region famed for its cuisine. You can view the green hills of Pampanga from Solaire North’s 38th floor Skybar with indoor and outdoor space to see and be seen in person and via selfie. A multi-level Kids Club has proven popular with families.

Bloomberry went outside the company to hire Hawkins in November 2023 when Solaire North was barely six months from opening. “I could bring some different eyes and experience into the group,” Hawkins says. His gaming and hospitality resume includes stints in Australia, New Zealand and, most notably, opening Melco’s Altira and City of Dreams in Macau.

“The opening of any multifaceted resort has many moving pieces,” says Hawkins, currently serving as acting COO for Bloomberry Resorts. “I am pleased to say that the opening of Solaire North went relatively smoothly and was a credit to all involved.”

Nevertheless, there have been significant adjustments to the resort that continue beyond year one, including SJM Resorts’ gaming chief Damian Quayle leaving Macau to become Solaire North’s COO on July 1.

On Solaire North’s main gaming floors at levels two and three, Hawkins says management changed the product mix, adding more table games to meet greater-than-expected demand. After opening with all new gaming machines, management brought in older machines from Solaire Entertainment City because customers asked for them.

From September last year, Solaire North began VIP operations on floors 36 and 37 and continues expanding its outreach to high rollers. The resort currently has eight VIP rooms serving premium direct customers and a handful of junkets.

Hawkins notes that VIP players are “promiscuous,” wanting to play at more than one casino, especially to change their luck. So premium players can shuttle between the two Solaire properties by car or even helicopter from Solaire North’s rooftop. He adds that at Solaire North “VIP is in its infancy.”

Solaire North arranges golf for guests, both nearby and in Clark, about a 75-minute drive to the north. The resort is trying to broaden its customer base by leveraging its relative proximity to Clark. “We think we offer a superior experience,” Hawkins says. “The international market is looking for world-class accommodation, service and comfort.”

Trading Jewelry for Food

The street level of Solaire North has also undergone major adjustments. Initial plans for ground-floor retailing yielded to the reality of three nearby shopping malls. Only Solaire Boutique for logo merchandise and designer gift items survives from the original retail blueprint. Solaire North may be the only $1 billion casino property in Asia without a jewelry shop on premises.

Management replaced retailing with additional F&B. Cafe Mangrove, named for the lobby sculpture, opened in November combining all-day dining with an evening-hours music lounge. It was joined in January by Trattoria e Dolci, baking pizzas in a special steel oven imported from Naples to be served alongside wines, Italian-accented cocktails, cold-cut platters and salads. Dolci (sweets) revolve around a full selection of gelato flavors to be taken straight or combined with Italian or unique house-baked treats.

Club Quezon is scheduled to debut later this year as a 230-seat supper club. Hawkins is collecting ideas for converting a space beside the main entrance now displaying paintings—spectacular artworks adorn wall space throughout the resort—into another F&B or related outlet.

Solaire North’s first-year results indicate that, even in Metro Manila, Philippine land-based gaming still has room to grow. Bloomberry plans to supplement its two current resorts with a third property in Cavite on the south side of the capital region. A company official says detailed plans for Cavite are on hold to focus on restoring Solaire Entertainment City’s luster.

The success of Solaire North raises the possibility that a satellite property may not be a distraction from fixing the Entertainment City flagship but an integral part of a comprehensive solution.