NORTH ASIA 38
RUSSIA
Tigre de Cristal eyes soaring revenue growth once borders reopen Tigre de Cristal, which celebrated its sixth birthday last month, has already seen its monthly revenue reach pre-Covid levels due to strong support from the local Russian market.
T
he property is situated in the Primorye Krai gaming zone close to Vladivostok in Eastern Russia. Once international travel resumes, operator G1 Entertainment expects revenue to be double or even treble current levels and predicts the zone will become one of Asia’s premier destinations. G1 Entertainment is ultimately a unit of Hong Kong-listed Summit Ascent Holdings, which is in turn now owned by the Suncity Group. The resort was closed for three and a half months last year and reopened to a very different operating environment, forcing it to pivot away from its international premium clientele and to put greater emphasis on the local market. “Since Covid everything has changed,” said Stelios Tsifetakis, chief operations officer at G1. “We had a strong base even before that, but we
Asia Gaming Briefings | November 2021
had to enhance it with different offerings and different promotions. We had to completely change the strategy.” “Pre-Covid 90 to 92 percent of our guests were foreign visitors so we didn’t pay so much attention to marketing in the Russian market as we could not accommodate the demand. One of the reasons that we are expanding, even under these circumstances, is that the hotel is too small to cater to the level of demand that we had.” The pivot has been successful, with the resort achieving 90 to 95 percent occupancy over the three weekend days and around 30 percent during the week. As well as changing its marketing focus, the company also had to change its product mix to cater for the local tastes and now has more slot machines than it did prior to the pandemic.
He said that as well as the usual casino games, such as baccarat and blackjack, the Russians are nostalgic for the games they used to play before gambling was banned outside of the gaming zones “Some we use are from that era. We also have machines that were made in Russia, which aren’t popular anywhere else, but are popular here.” “Month-on-month our revenues are growing to pre-Covid if not better. This makes us very positive, especially given we have another casino in the area. We are not losing market share, we are gaining market share,” he said, referring to the Shambhala casino which opened in October last year. In terms of international travel, Tsifetakis said the resort has received many queries from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong
