KAWIT ISLAND, Cebu—NUSTAR Resort and Casino, the first and only integrated resort in the Visayas and Mindanao, is positioning Cebu as a gaming hub in Southeast Asia.
The resort, which opened in May 2022, saw a significant number of visitors from South Korea and China as well as local players.
‘We don’t have too many players from Macau. It’s actually predominantly local as well as Korean,” NUSTAR senior vice president for gaming operations Trevor Hammond said.
Hammond said NUSTAR is also looking at other Southeast Asian markets such as Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam.
NUSTAR is home to a two-level casino, with a mix of gaming tables and machines peppered across 21,000 square meters of floor area, making it the largest and most varied gaming floor in the region.
With a wide array of table games, slot machines, plus a gaming stadium and exclusive VIP rooms, guests can discover an exhilarating gaming experience and the thrill of winning.
“I think what we tried to do here is to market Cebu. It’s not about NUSTAR. We believe NUSTAR will be the choice of guests, visitors to the region,” he said.
”So when you land in Cebu, it’s synonymous with new stuff. So I think that’s it. The region sells itself. It’s a beautiful island. There’s so much to do here,” Hammond said.
Hammond said the increased flight connectivity to Cebu from various international destinations would further boost the resort’s gaming market.
From Cebu, Cebu Pacific, the airline of the Gokongwei Group, flies to Manila 16x daily, to Davao 5x daily, to Iloilo and Clark 4x daily and to 20 other domestic destinations.
The airline also flies from Cebu to Hong Kong 2x daily, to Bangkok-Don Mueang 3x weekly, to Osaka 4x weekly and to Incheon, Narita and Singapore daily.
NUSTAR is the flagship project of Universal Hotels and Resorts, Inc. (UHRI), a privately owned corporation of the Gokongwei Group focused primarily on gaming and integrated resort developments across the Philippines.
