CITY of Dreams Manila is committed to improving its offerings to its customers, as its parent company introduced its new luxury hotel brand called “Nüwa.”
In a news statement sent over the weekend, Melco Resorts and Entertainment Ltd., a Hong Kong-based gaming and entertainment casino resort owner and operator, said Nüwa will replace the current Crown Towers Hotels in its flagship properties, the City of Dreams Manila and Macau. The launch of the new hotel brand will be officially made on January 16, 2018.
Melco Chairman and CEO Lawrence Ho said: “We are excited to introduce Nüwa. The new hotel brand embodies the very essence of Melco’s pursuit to provide our guests the very best in sophistication, quality and innovation.” The company said the luxury hotel brand was inspired by the eponymous heroine from Chinese mythology—“Nüwa represents classic Asian refinement.” The gaming firm added that the brand “further exemplifies Melco’s core mission to continue providing a better guest experience. It is the first step in the preparation of the launch of Phase 3 of City of Dreams Macau in the second quarter of 2018.”
Geoff Andres, City of Dreams Manila property president, confirmed in an e-mailed statement to the BusinessMirror, that the rebranding of Crown Towers was in line with the sale of shares by Australian billionaire James Packer in Melco, which began last year. The sale was completed in May 2017, for which, Packer received $987 million.
“Upon the completion of the shares buyout, Melco launched Nuwa to help fully demonstrate the essence and value of Melco, which in its commitment to providing the best quality and standard to its guests, never ceases to improve itself, always introducing innovative concepts.”
While no new investment into upgrades will be happening in the short term, Andres added, “City of Dreams Manila is always and continuously improving the resort’s customer experience.” He added that the most recent example was the reopening of The Tasting Room, a fine-dining restaurant in Crown Towers. Packer terminated his 12-year partnership with Ho, after booking losses from their joint gaming ventures, including the City of Dreams properties, since 2010. Another major factor in Packer’s exit from his gaming investments in Asia, according to analysts quoted in published reports, were the arrests of several Crown employees in China in October 2016.
Following initial losses since its soft opening in November 2014, City of Dreams Manila finally posted a turnaround in its finances and recorded a net profit of some P497 million from January to September 2017. The integrated casinos registered a net loss of some P1.6 billion in the same period last year.
Gaming revenues of City of Dreams Manila have vastly improved since the warming of ties between Beijing and Manila, attracting massive numbers of Chin ese tourists into the Philippines. The Department of Tourism reported 810,807 visitors from China in the period January to October 2017, some 40 percent more than the arrivals in the same period in 2016. The surge in Chinese visitors in the 10-month period in 2017, earned the market a second place position among the Philippines’s top source of tourists. (See “DOT says 6.5-million arrivals target for 2017 will be met as 10-month haul rises 11.5 percent,” in the BusinessMirror, December 12, 2017.)