Party! The Cove plans to change how Manila has fun

By Zsarlene B. Chua, Reporter

RIGHT BEFORE 2017 ended, Okada Manila — the newest integrated resort in Entertainment City, Parañaque — opened Cove Manila, “Southeast Asia’s largest and grandest entertainment space” at 9,000-square meters.

“This is the first real mega-nightclub in the country,” Maxwell Zetlin, vice-president for entertainment at Okada Manila, pointed out during an interview with BusinessWorld in late January.

Located within the 44-hectare integrated resort, the Cove Manila is certainly in keeping with Okada Manila’s aim to be the biggest in everything, with its butterfly-shaped pool and three-storey structure housing the beach club’s cabanas and bungalows and a separate nightclub setup, all encased in a climate-controlled dome facing the famed Manila sunset.

The price tag of the property? Anywhere between $100 million to $120 million.

But beyond being the biggest nightclub in the country (and the region, according to a company release), the Cove is making a case to elevate the entertainment options in Entertainment City, saying that they need to build the market in a country that’s not used to having clubs of this scale.

“It’s a lot different [here] from where we ended up coming from in Las Vegas. It’s a way different market in the sense that the Philippines is not really at that point of understanding the concept of a mega-nightclub yet,” said Mr. Zetlin, who added that the country is about five years behind the US resort city famed for its nightlife.

Mr. Zetlin said that while they had a “great start” during the opening on Dec. 15 with American DJ Steve Aoki, it became a learning experience about the market.

“We welcomed almost 12,000 people and it was a lot more than what we expected,” he said, noting that in the Philippines, unlike in Las Vegas, people are not used to waiting for two hours to get into a space that’s going to be filled by thousands. (As a whole, the Cove Manila can accommodate close to 4,000 people: 3,000 in the beach club and 800 in the nightclub.)

The opening salvo Mr. Zetlin said, gave them an insight into a market that needs creative concepts to encourage people to come to a destination like Cove Manila.

Urban beach clubs and pool clubs, while not a new idea, is something that Filipinos are slowly getting used to, starting with the launch of the Palace Pool Club in Bonifacio Global City (BGC), Taguig in 2015.

They don’t always succeed: Ibiza Beach Club, a 4,000-sqm property in BGC, closed in January, less than a year into operations, due to “massive losses month per month” since it opened in April 2017.

“It comes down to selling that experience, selling that lifestyle and Palace [Pool Club] has done an unbelievable job paving the way for us,” Mr. Zetlin said of its competition.

THE LOCAL MARKET
In a country that welcomes an average of six million foreign visitors per year, Mr. Zetlin said there’s a need to cater to the local market in order to be sustainable.

“We look to leverage people who are out here and not necessarily compete with BGC to get traffic because there is a very sustainable market that’s already here,” he said.

Locals compose 60% to 70% of Cove Manila’s guests, many of them millennials at the “older end of the generation,” and the 30- to 40-year-old crowd, though they do get visitors from Japan, China, and Korea.

“In Las Vegas, people open their entertainment wallets because they’re there for a week or for the weekend. You have new customers every week. Here, you have repeat customers and businesses from the local market. Definitely from a price perspective, we have to be competitive — we can’t charge what we’re used to in the US because the market is a lot more price-sensitive here,” Mr. Zetlin said, while acknowledging that the biggest crowd draws are still the international DJs and performers.

A cursory look at the some of the events lined up for the month showed that tickets to American singer Nelly’s performance slated on Feb. 17 cost P3,000 for men and P2,500 for women (tickets include one drink).

Big names draw big crowds, but that doesn’t necessarily mean customers will return. Mr. Zetlin said that what makes clubs successful is introducing an experience guests won’t get tired of easily.

“A lot of clubs promise that you’ll have the best weekend of your life, but when you go in it’s the same monotonous experience, there’s nothing there that’s built in to that theme and understanding,” he said.

“We’re really working on that interactive experience with our customers. I think there’s been a shift between our guests being spectators to wanting to be part of that event. You’re almost part of the show now, and that sort of aspect is one that we’re playing around with Sunset Lounge — you’re almost made to feel you’re in Ibiza or in another country or continent as we bring in the interactive elements and get the guests involved,” he explained.

Sunset Sessions is one of the club’s themed events where guests can watch the sunset at the beach club’s dedicated Sunset Lounge at 5 p.m. and stay until 8 p.m. Another themed event is Retro Nights, held every Thursday starting 9 p.m. featuring music from the 1970s to the 2000s.

“Every aspect of the dome is a different experience. We’re hoping to drive repeat visitation but never making them think that they’re doing the same thing over and over again,” he said.

The property welcomes 1,400 to 1,800 people “on regular DJ nights.”

THE NEED FOR COOPERATION
While acknowledging that they are making inroads in educating the market that options like this exists, Mr. Zetlin said it will take more time before the market matures and that Okada Manila can’t go it alone to make the market grow.

“I genuinely believe that down the road — whether it be six months or two years — people are going to start getting used to coming here more often,” he said, adding that other properties in Entertainment City need to step up their entertainment game.

“It’s not going to take just Okada Manila but all the integrated resorts in Entertainment City to start working together and supporting each other in that sense,” Mr. Zetlin said.

“There needs to be more out here… one property is not enough. You need all the properties to buy into this being Entertainment City and that don’t just mean the casinos,” he explained. The properties, he noted, should work together to build the market first before fighting for market share.