The Grand Ho Tram, a Vietnam resort with foreigner-only casino, is using high-profile events to help drive its gaming and hotel business. That is according to Walt Power (pictured), chief executive of The Grand Ho Tram Resort and Casino, speaking in an interview with GGRAsia.
A latest example was the “Fight Mania” night on Saturday, by the World Boxing Organization (WBO) Asia Pacific, with a six-bout card featuring some of the brightest talent from the region, and including fighters from South Korea, an important target market for The Grand Ho Tram, according to its CEO. The event was held in the property’s 1,254-square-metres (13,498 sq. feet) ballroom, and broadcast on Vietnamese television, to an audience said by the ring announcer to be in the “millions”.
Such events are “critical” to the property’s success, explained Mr Power, in helping to attract the likes of martial arts fans and others to make the two-and-a-half hour road trip from Ho Chi Minh City, to Ho Tram on Vietnam’s southern coast. The executive, a veteran of Macau casino operations, has been in his current role for four years, and said he immediately recognised the value of expanding his property’s events roster to drive its trade.
While The Grand Ho Tram’s casino (pictured below) is not currently authorised to serve locals, Mr Power says expatriates from South Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere, with business interests in Vietnam and based in cosmopolitan Ho Chi Minh City, a metropolis of more than nine million, are an important component of its clientele.
Mr Power stated: “When we have these special events, whether it’s boxing, MMA [mixed martial arts], casino VIP events – we’ve had horse racing on the beach recently – the casino performance goes way up. The numbers speak for themselves.”
Combat sports events “have the highest [casino] drop for a weekend period,” he added.
The major investor in The Grand Ho Tram is private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC, and so the property does not make public specific operating numbers in the manner of publicly-listed casino companies. Vietnam-focused investment manager VinaCapital is also a backer.
BY: 슬롯머신