Bring on the dancing girls, says SkyCity

Nigel Morrison wants glamour, risk and excitement for SkyCity's punters and stability for its investors. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Lots of people pop into the office in the weekend to catch up on work.

For Nigel Morrison popping down to work can mean a drink at the bars or restaurants adjacent to the Sky Tower.

"Sometimes I visit the casino," said the SkyCity Entertainment chief executive after reporting financial results for his first full year.

He says his favourite game is roulette but insists he sometimes tries the pokies, a less glamorous turn for the casino boss.

Most companies offered wins and losses in the recent results season.

After a period of upheavals two years ago the message from SkyCity was stability clouded by the economic climate, and that what appears to be the ultimate victim of discretionary spending is remarkably resilient.

Morrison acknowledges though that the full impact of unemployment is probably not fully apparent yet.

Results announcements are about selling companies and their stewardship. SkyCity is selling the idea of glamour, risk and excitement for punters with stability and expansion for investors.

For all of the razzle dazzle - Morrison would like to see dancing girls at one of the new SkyCity venues - the company's foundation is in maths not mammon.

The odds, a theoretical win rate of 1.3 per cent, vary year by year. But overall they are predictable. The aim, as with all retailers, is to attract foot traffic and take a margin on the money they spend.

Morrison was drawn to the casino industry in the late 1980s, not with a degree in bluffing but a background in analytics.

He has found it a natural home.

"I like the business - the fact that it is open 24 hours a day, it's a people business with 7000 staff in New Zealand and Australia," he says.

"I have been in the casino business 20 years. We have good and bad days but they are all a challenge."

SkyCity faced plenty of challenges when he took over 18 months ago, with some investors clamouring for the board to bring tighter focus on returns and refocus on the game at hand.

Under founder and former chief executive Evan Davies the company - whose centrepiece is the giant tower in the centre of the Auckland CBD - had taken the air of a Shakespearean tragedy.

After Davies stepped down, Sky director Elmar Toime brought a sense of bland stability. But Morrison and his calls for more dancing girls has revived a showbiz buzz.

Morrison came from being group chief financial officer of Galaxy Entertainment Group in Macau, a leading publicly-listed Hong Kong-based group operating and developing casinos.

The circumstances of his departure are unclear, but Morrison will not be the first western executive who has faced a challenge fitting in with family-dominated Asian companies.

The focus for SkyCity he says has been to concentrate on customer experience.

For instance, turning around the once-troubled Adelaide casino "going from a bar and nightclub for 18 and 19-year-olds to a full-scale casino experience".

Likewise there has been a big expansion of the Darwin casino that will only kick in this year.

Morrison pitches the company's contribution to tourism and there is no doubt the casinos provide another option for visitors whether in Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch or Queenstown, or across the Tasman. But part of that - and expansion of bars, restaurants and hotels - is to both draw in customers and, to a lesser extent, a public relations role taking attention away from gambling.

It's that core activity that attracts negative comment and potentially regulation that can hurt profits. Morrison also promotes the image of a night out at the casino spending say, $60 apiece, for three or four hours entertainment.

He says that last year SkyCity attracted more visits but people spent less.

"We have proven that if we provide good value entertainment and excitement ... that no matter how bad things get we are going to be pretty resilient, he said.

"What we are saying is go out and have fun and forget the doldrums.

"They might not buy a new car or go on an overseas holiday - but they can go out and have a few beers with friends."