Club 88 opens second e-gaming facility at Mariana Resort

Club 88 opened to the public its second e-gaming facility on the northern side of the island at the Mariana Resort & Spa last Friday.

Club 88 in Mariana Resort currently has 30 aristocratic slot machines and an electronic roulette with eight stations. (Frauleine Villanueva-Dizon)

According to owner Victoria Scott, Mariana Resort is a good venue for this facility.

“There’s not much to do on this side of the island after the sun goes down. So this is a nice place where people can come,” Scott said. “Now they have another venue here.”

Club 88 in Mariana Resort currently has 30 aristocratic slot machines and an electronic roulette with eight stations. Club manager Gus Noble said they will be bringing in a couple more.

“Being based on the resort, we’re targeting the tourists. With this type of facility, we’re looking at being able to offer full entertainment alongside the restaurant,” Noble said.

“We think Saipan needs a few places where people can have a good night out, have a bit of fun, a chance to win some money and enjoy some nice ambience, some food, some music,” he added.

With the rise of e-gaming facilities and a casino on Saipan, Club 88 tries to differentiate itself through the quality of their service.

“We’d like to differentiate ourselves on a very strong customer service focus. We really want to be the leader in performing great customer service, great promotions, good games, big jackpots,” Noble said.

When asked about their first club at the Oceanview Hotel in Garapan, Noble said they are very happy with it, especially with the clientele they have already established.

Mariana Resort sales and marketing manager Yuichi Kobayashi said the club is an added feature to their resort. “I think it’s better for the hotel because we are far from Garapan, so we don’t have much entertainment, especially at night time, for in-house guests so a gaming room will be very good.”

“We will also have a shuttle bus to the Garapan area to bring customers here,” he added.

The new Club 88 opened only a day after the Department of Public Lands released a request for proposal for the Mariana Resort property.

Scott said they knew that the RFP’s issuance was possible. “We knew when we came in that we will probably be gone in three years,” she said.

Sharing her views on the land lease issue, Scott, who is from Palms Springs, California, where land is also owned and leased by the Agua Caliente Tribe and must be negotiated through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said the situation on island is having an adverse affect on the tourism industry.

“[In Palms Spring] they never kick off people from the land. They renew their leases. And the nice thing about doing business that way versus how they do it here is that the people are not afraid that they’re going to lose their hotel or their restaurant or their houses, their condos, hospitals, everybody. So they’re constantly improving,” Scott said.

“If you have a house and you know that you’re going to lose it in five years, you really wouldn’t want to put much money in it, would you?” she said. “I think it adversely hurts the tourism industry here because there are about three or more hotels that are coming up and if this is the precedent, they are not going to fix up their hotels so I think it’s going to hurt the tourism industry here.”