Operator News

Philippines – Bloomberry well placed to survive despite Solaire being shut until May

Bloomberry Resorts, owner of Solaire, one of the four resort casinos in Manila’s Entertainment City, has said 2020 will be a write-off due to the global COVID-19 pandemic with it not expecting consumer sending to recover quickly.

Solaire shut its doors from March 15 and will stay shut until April 30 with Chairman and CEO Enrique Razon Jr saying the operator is well placed to survive. Bloomberry’s profit increased 38 per cent in 2019 to Php9.9bn (US$196m)

Speaking to Bloomberg, he said: “Of course when you are closed there is no cash flow really, although we have long term guests in the hotel who are staying put here, but the cash in the group is pretty healthy. Of course this year, you can write it off, but there really are no concerns there. I think people are profoundly impacted by the virus and the lockdowns, having to focus just on buying food, spending their money. The government has to give people cash. I think people will come out of this and the savings rate is going to dramatically increase, so I don’t think consumer spending is going to recover that quickly.”

Mr. Razon is also Chairman and CEO of International Container Terminal Services Inc (ICTSI), a Philippine port business, which is focusing on speeding up the delivery of food and medical equipment.

“The people need to be fed, they need to be given medicine and the government needs all the shipments that have been coming in,” Mr. Razon said. “The whole thing is unprecedented. The concerns of the business community are secondary at this point. The main thing is just to keep the economy flowing, goods flowing, get the infection rate down and we’ll see about lifting the lockdown. Lifting lockdowns in this environment is going to be very tricky. There has to be a plan, it’s not just one day to the next, so I think a lot of people are under-estimating what this is going to take.”