Year One J
HIPPODROME BIRTHDAY
uly 13th 2012 saw the Hippodrome’s opening ceremony, with London Mayor Boris Johnson performing the honours. Twelve months down the line, has the Hippodrome succeeded? This stunning casino seems to have exceeded
expectations, as Simon Thomas told Casino International.
Casino International: Before you opened you had clear ideas on how the casino would work – the basement entrance on to Chinatown, making the casino an entertainment destination… Has any of your vision altered since you opened or has it all worked as you thought? Simon Thomas: If only! The reality of the Hippodrome is that it is enormous; a lot of the principles we believed in have proved to be absolutely true. The location is incredible – we have 250,000 people a day walking past our doors, we have Chinatown at our back door, we’re getting huge volumes of people. Clearly the operation of each individual area has been and continues to be a work in progress, refining and improving as we go. The basement is where we have Baccarat and Pai Gow, so there is a predominance of Chinese players there, but it is also the home of some of our lower stake gaming. There’s a really good buzz in that playing area. The ground floor has worked pretty well as we thought it would, as an international-style casino in a very swanky theatre atrium, but we’ve managed to put character in that is sometimes lacking in older buildings, so people walk in and just say ‘wow’. The top floor has been a little different to what we anticipated. Because of the smoking facility it is unbelievably popular. We’ve now split the gaming up there to make more of the volume, it was to be pure high-stake but it’s now half a more fun, Las Vegas- style party pit environment, and some of our high stake play likes to be on the main floors where they are more visible. We’ve also been pleasantly wrong on the number of
daily admissions. We were hoping for around 2,000 admissions, but we actually get more like 4,000; our busiest day saw more like 7,000 admissions. We’ve taken some business from local casinos, certainly, but we have also created a huge section of new business. Mintel statistics say that 15% of people in the UK have been to a casino abroad but only 3.5% have
34 JULY/AUGUST 2013
The Hippodrome, London’s newest casino, is celebrating its first birthday. Owner Simon Thomas sat down with Casino International to talk about the highs and lows of that first twelve months
Jimmy and Simon Thomas
been to a casino in the UK; clearly when people are abroad there is a different feel to spending money, but mainly people go to casinos when they are away because the casinos are fun; people will have a gamble, drink, eat, watch shows and before us, there really wasn’t anything in the UK that was in that space. So I think we are attracting a lot of UK casino- goers who will only go to this type of casino, and I think we also have a venue where tourists feel comfortable.
CI: Have you attracted a lot of first-time players
then? ST: We’ve attracted a lot of people of all levels of
play. We’ve been surprised by the play we’ve had from the Mayfair casinos. We’re not after their market but we’re getting the middle and lower-level Mayfair customers who are coming here because we’re more fun. They might not be playing to their normal level but they are enjoying themselves and are important to us.
CI: What has been the impact on casinos in the
area? ST: We’ve certainly had an impact on local casinos. The good thing from everyone’s point of view is that we haven’t devastated them. They’re all still running well, we’re a much newer property with a wider range of products and activities so we have a wider appeal, but we’ve shown that the market was nowhere near saturated. We’ve probably added between 15- and 20,000 casino entries into the area, which goes to show what you can achieve when you provide
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62