Employees of several high-end entertainment clubs and KTV bars in Metro Manila’s red light districts, including Pegasus Ultimate Men’s Club and Heartbeat Mega KTV, have received separation pay from Jolly Ting, the chairman and chief executive of publicly listed Jolliville Holdings Corp., according to sources.
Jolliville rents out the facilities to these night clubs and KTV bars while an outsourcing unit of the company provides the staff and talents for their operations.
Sources said at least 10 big night clubs, including Pegasus and Heartbeat in Quezon City that have been non-operational over the past three months were not expected to reopen this year because of the huge impact of the health crisis.
The clubs have been shut down since March 16 when the government declared Metro Manila under the enhanced community quarantine.
Jolliville Holdings through corporate secretary Ortrud Ting-Yao and legal counsel Maria Joy Ting had yet to respond to queries from Manila Standard as this was being written. Calls made to Heartbeat and Pegasus went unanswered. Several members of the Ting family, however, denied the story on the Facebook page of Manila Standard, particularly the inclusion of Air Force One in the list of establishments that were closed down.
Sources said thousands of regular employees and talents, mostly dancers and guest relations officers, under Servwell BPO International Inc., Jolliville’s outsourcing unit which provides the staffing needs of different KTV operators in Metro Manila, were expected to lose their source of income.
The closure of the high-end bars and night clubs in Metro Manila followed the decision of Angie King to shut down several branches of Victoria Court motels as the government continued to implement social distancing rules across all industries.
Night clubs were blamed for the spread of the virus in South Korea when the East Asian country tried to relax the restrictions on mobility last month.
Jolliville said that since it was established in September 1986, the company underwent a transformation to that of a holding company.
The 75-year-old Ting, who was known as “entertainment king” in the 1980s and 1990s, earlier said that he diversified from night club operation to property development, tourism and resorts, power generation and water distribution.
Ting started in the night club business in the early 1980s, then branched out into real estate venture with Jolliville Realty and Development Co. Inc. in September 1986. The SEC approved the change in the corporate name of JRDCI to Jolliville Holdings Corp. in April 1999.
Documents from the PSE, however, show that Jolliville still leases and rents out certain assets including land, buildings and improvements, furnishings and fixtures, equipment and machineries to “a number of independent business entities involved in the operation and management of KTV entertainment/recreation centers in the Metro Manila area”.
Jolliville has complicated leasing, management and BPO operations. In its report to the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2016, Jolliville said that while its competitors offer their leasing lines to the general public, none of them have concentrated and specialized on servicing the particular market niche of the company—the KTV operators.
"The long-established relationship of the company with its KTV clients in the renting out of facilities, furnishings and equipment puts it at some advantage vis-à-vis its competitors. This competitive advantage is further strengthened by the management services and consultancy contracts of the company with its KTV clients,” it said.
It said its BPO unit has a competitive advantage because of its long-time relationship with clients as well as the fact that it has multi-faceted business relationship with them and rents out to the same clients furnishing, fixtures, furniture and equipment for their KTV operations.
"The management services and business process outsourcing lines are highly dependent on the continuing renewals of its contracts with its clients. The company is confident though that, for as long as the KTV operations of its clients are viable and profitable, it will continue to service the specialized business process outsourcing needs of these clients,” it said.
The Quezon City-based company posted a net income of P382 million on P1.1-billion revenues in 2018.
Its subsidiaries include Jolliville Group Management Inc., Jollideal Marketing Corp., Ormina Realty and Development Corp., Calapan WaterWorks Corp., Jolliville Leisure and Resort Corp., Ormin Holdings Corp., Servwell BPO International Inc. and Granville Ventures Inc.
In 2017, Ting won a trademark case against fastfood chain operator Jollibee Foods Corp. over the use of the name Jolliville.
Jollibee filed a notice of opposition in January 2013 against the application of Jolliville Holdings Corp. for the registration of its corporate name and logo “Jolliville.”
Jolliville said in its appeal that the use of “Jolli” was a tribute to its founder Jolly Ting and that Jollibee could not claim exclusive and immediate association of ‘Jolli’ or ‘Jolly’ as there were other registered corporations and trademarks using the same name.
Jolliville said its name was a trademark formed in combination of Jolly Ting’s first name and ‘ville’, resulting in a coined word suggestive of the kind of business he was into, which was real estate.
