GAMING FOR AFRICA
The city of Tshwane in Gauteng, South Africa, is now home to the country’s second-largest casino, Time Square. Casino International caught up with General Manager Brett Hoppé to find out about the development
It’s Time I
t’s the biggest development in the hospitality, gaming and leisure industry in South Africa since the construction of GrandWest in Cape Town 17 years ago. Situated in
Tshwane’s Menlyn Maine precinct, South Africa’s first ‘green city’ and one of Pretoria’s most popular points of interest, Time Square is a bold and striking casino and entertainment hub – and a first in this mature market, in that it came about as the result of relocating an existing casino licence.
Casino International: What’s in Time
Square? Brett Hoppé: Time Square consists of 2000 slots,
60 tables, 16 restaurants, 11 bar operations and an 8,500-seat arena, plus a 240-key hotel. The casino, 16 restaurants and the bars opened on April 1st 2017. It’s a phased opening, so the arena follows in November, and the hotel is coming in March 2018. It’s a development of about 4.1 billion South African Rand (just over $300million US). It is South Africa’s second-largest casino, and the most technologically advanced, both in floor layout design and the systems integration. It’s cutting edge in a South African context and speaking globally, we have some product that you won’t see outside of the US.
CI: Can you tell us more about your innovations
in layout and technology? BH: The layout is very important; we have taken
26 AUGUST 2017
advantage of experience and hindsight for game placement and differentiation. When you start with a piece of white paper, you have total freedom and we have made sure that differentiation is significant. We have made it so that the food and beverage in proximity to products relative to the demographic of the target market of that machine. We have put a lot of work and effort into this. Slot and table integration in terms of the floor
design is implemented in a way that breaks the mould, we wanted to make sure we had a completely integrated offering. Again, the target market for each zone on the floor was considered too, so everything works and fits together perfectly for the customer. Apart from the fabulous technology, we have some
quite unusual games in and around restaurants, and those games relate to the restaurant customers. It’s been quite a journey in terms of layout and design.
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