Bloomberry eyes mid-2019 start for QC hotel, casino project

• Source: http://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1037632
• Tuesday, June 5, 2018 10:02 pm

By Leslie Gatpolintan (PNA)

MANILA -- Bloomberry Resorts Corp. expects to develop its planned hotel and casino project in Quezon City next year, its second in the country, as it rides on the local tourism industry's growth.

“We are on track to develop our Quezon City property by early 2022, with construction set to begin in mid-2019. This is part of our strategy to capture the base mass segment in the north,” Bloomberry chairman and chief executive officer Enrique Razon Jr. said during the company’s stockholders’ meeting on Tuesday.

Razon said the planned high-rise hotel and casino project will be smaller than the Solaire Resorts and Casino.

“We are finalizing the design. We have our in-house designers, we have engineering consultants,” he later told reporters.

Razon said he sees tourism will continue to play a significant role in the growth of Philippine integrated resort, along with the rise in middle-class incomes and increasing connectivity across the region.

“Of significance to us in the integrated resort industry was the growth in tourism. Foreign visitation grew 18 percent to seven million largely on the back of improved relations with China,” he noted.

Razon cited data estimating that tourism contributed around USD300 million to the Philippine gaming sector’s mass-market gross gaming revenues in 2017.