Face-to-Face: Shaun McCamley
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This week, Travel Daily chats with Shaun McCamley, president of the Ho Tram Resort Casino in Vietnam, about the performance and prospects of his new integrated resort…
Q) How has The Grand Ho Tram Strip performed since opening in summer 2013, as has this matched your expectations?
Generally speaking, it has performed very well, is tracking above budget, and setting new record months regularly.
To break that down a little further for you, VIP areas in the casino have been performing solidly for some time now, and a few months back we turned our attention toward more aggressively marketing the mass gaming areas, and we are seeing results of those efforts coming in now, with growth across all areas of our mass floor.
The resort performs very well. It has been a huge hit with guests from near and far, and we are typically packed to the rafters with leisure travellers every weekend. Our weekday trade is solid as well, reflecting the superb MICE offering that we have here. F&B has also done very well, with some recent tweaks to our restaurants and bars proving very popular with guests so far.
The Bluffs has been amazing for us. It is the talk of the golfing-town, and rapidly becoming a must-play course for golfers around the region. The announcement of an ATP event will help to drive awareness further among players in this part of the world. Our announcement a few weeks ago of Robert Rock as our brand ambassador – another first for Vietnam – should help to get the word out about the Bluffs to golf fans further afield as he bears our logo on the European Tour.
Q) What are your biggest guest source markets, and what trends are you seeing in terms of guest demographics?
Generally speaking, intra Asia. We have a huge potential golfing and gaming market all within a few flight hours from here, and this is where we direct most of our effort and attention.
Locally-based expats are also important to us, as they are right on our doorstep and have the propensity to play both the course and the tables. Koreans, Japanese and Viet Kieu tend to be the most important of these groups. Overseas Vietnamese visit typically once a year, often at Tet, and so this is an important target market for us.
Finally local Vietnamese, despite being not allowed to enter our gaming areas, have really taken to the product here, loving our scenery, our F&B and flocking to the events that we host here.
Q) Visitor arrivals to Vietnam, and especially those from China, have been declining in recent months. Have you felt the impact of this?
A lot has been written about this lately, and it is a topic that we watch very closely. We certainly noticed a drop off from China in 2014 over the two nations’ tensions over territorial issues in the East Sea.
However we saw our numbers rebound later in the year, mostly due to our very strong partner development programmes in Macau. We have found that while Macau has reported some tough times of late, our positioning as a very different alternative to Macau has been very well received. The amenities beyond the casino seem to be quite a draw, and we have done well to buck-the-broader-trends with this.
Vietnam has also seen a drop off in Russian visitors. They were coming in tremendous numbers in the past couple of years, but some of the issues surrounding their currency and various economic sanctions there at present have seen Russian outbound tourism numbers fall to all destinations. This makes a big difference to Vietnam’s inbound numbers, but not a lot to us in Ho Tram – they tended to head to a couple of beaches a little further north of us.
On the brighter side however, we can say is that Korea has been a bright spot for visitor numbers to Vietnam, and this is a key target for us. Indeed most of Asia has seen growth to Vietnam, and we continue to promote all around the region to ITOs and direct to travellers to bring them to Vietnam and bring them to Ho Tram.
Q) What are the most popular activities at the resort, and are you seeing strong demand from, say, the international golf tourism and MICE markets?
The casino is front and centre of course, but our non-gaming amenities are truly remarkable. The golf course just announced that it will host the richest sporting event in Vietnam’s history – The Ho Tram Open, part of golf’s Asian Tour, with a US$1.5 million purse. The Bluffs is the talk of the region when it comes to new courses, and indeed having just hosted various golfing media and dignitaries on site this past week, phrases like ‘Asia’s best’ and ‘top 5 in the region’ were heard all over our site from people in the know.
Speaking of tournaments, in May we will host Vietnam’s first Asian Poker Tour event, which is extremely exciting for all of us in the casino industry, and we are hearing of tremendous interest in it from players around the region.
We have made various changes and refinements to all of our F&B offering in the past few months, and those changes are showing real traction with our guests.
Our Rio parties are attracting hundreds of revellers from the city every month, and we are getting a great reputation as party central from those pool parties. Our MICE offering has always been solid, both from within Vietnam and around the region.
Q) How is work progressing on the second phase of the resort, and what further developments can we expect from The Grand Ho Tram Strip in future?
We announced at the opening of The Bluffs that tower 2 would be a residential offering that allows people the chance to own a piece of the Ho Tram Strip. Much of the piling and foundation work was put in some time ago, and we recently signed a deal with Coteccons to undertake the construction of our residential tower. We expect it to be ready late in 2016.
Beyond that, we will ultimately have a second integrated resort on site, and then three other five star resorts without gaming amenities.
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