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Steven Tight, CZR president for international development, said the US casino giant brought in foreign experts to look into the re-design of the airport to connect terminals 1 and 2 via a light railway transit.
The foreign experts also proposed ways to raise the number of flights on NAIA’s existing runways.
Tight said the suggestion can be accomplished by building a new control tower with technologically advanced equipment that can guide aircraft 150 miles away, instead of the present 50 miles, to allow more take-offs and landings.
Also, additional high-speed exits are also proposed for aircraft to immediately clear the runway after landing, giving way to the next aircraft that will either land or take off, he said.
CZR is expected to bring in as many as 3.5 million visitors annually to the Philippines.
The casino giant is also projected to initially generate 20,000 jobs and make the Philippines a major tourist destination, not only for casino players.
Tight believes the Philippines has “more to offer” than Macau, where major casino operators are already located.
“Macau blossomed into a behemoth because it allowed all the major global players to operate there. Each operator spent huge sums to market Macau. It will be the same with the Philippines, which actually has more to offer and should be a better destination,” Tight said.
He said that Macau, now with more than 40 casinos, has grown so fast that it now dwarfs Las Vegas, with 6 times more revenues.
Gaming investments is one of the emerging lucrative ventures in the Philippines.
But the Cabinet of President Benigno Aquino III is divided over the entry of the casino giant.
In October, Aquino said in a forum with journalists that the desire of CZR to have a license to operate in the Phlippines “is subject to debate among the Cabinet.”
Aquino said there are sectors that are saying that CZR would not be valuable to the gaming industry and the country, revenue-wise, but there are also those who say that “Caesars is a brand name that kind of tells the world that we’re, in a sense, we have arrived.”
As of October, Aquino said only the Department of Tourism supports the proposal, while the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation is against it, and the Department of Finance “is in between the two.” – Rappler.com
NAIA terminal 1 image (left, background) file photo by Agence France-Presse
NAIA terminal 2 image (right, background) from Wikimedia Commons
Caesars Entertainment logo from the website
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