The Philippines continues to be an attractive destination for gambling firms to open new casinos as the government has continued to invite foreign investment into its growing gambling industry. This time around Megaworld Corp, a property firm based in the Philippines is collaborating with the Travellers International Hotel Group Inc, a casino firm, to launch a special leisure and entertainment township in Manila Bay’s Entertainment City.

The two companies are expected to invest a combined total of around $1.4 billion to develop over 76.6 acres that will border the Resorts World Bayshore, which is yet another new casino that Travellers International is developing and is expected to be completed before the end of 2018.

Megaworld is owned by Alliance Global. Travellers International was created after Alliance Global Group Inc, based out of the Philippines, formed a partnership with Genting Hong Kong Ltd. The company currently operates a hotel complex situated near the Manila International Airport and also the Resorts World Manila casino.

Megaworld stated that the new township is expected to be completed by the end of 2020 if everything goes as per plan. The new township will be known as Westside City and consist of a number of VIP apartments, a “Grand Opera House” that can seat up to 3,000 people and a luxury shopping mall. This mega-project will also consist of a number of premier hotels including the a Hotel Okura Manila from Okura Hotels and Resorts; a Westin Hotel from Starwood Asia Pacific Hotels and Resorts Group; a Kingsford Hotel and a Genting Grand and a Crockfords Tower from the Genting Group. The entire project is expected to have more than 1,500 high end hotel rooms.

In a statement, Andrew Tan, chairman and chief executive of both Alliance Global and Megaworld, said “We are very excited to see Westside City rising to be a showcase of Manila as a truly world-class Philippine capital.”

The Philippines government has already licensed four integrated casino resorts to operate in Entertainment City, which the government plans to market as a casino district, similar to the Cotai strip in Macau. Casinos in the Philippines have been looking to target mass market gamblers from Mainland China and have also collaborated with junket operators to bringing in VIP gamblers from the Mainland.

Morgan Stanley Research released a report in October which stated that the gross gaming revenue from casinos are expected to grow at around 8 percent in 2016 and not at 21 percent as estimated earlier.