Philippine property developers are now looking at online gambling firms to play messiah and save the cooling office space sector as investments in the business process outsourcing (BPO) dwindles.

For years, the BPO sector has accounted for 60 to 70 percent of total office space demand while the online gambling sector comes as second fiddle.

Property consultancy firm Colliers International, however, noted that the story will be different for the Philippine office space this year as the BPO investments cools down.

Analysts are expressing concern over the impact of the BPO slowdown to the property sector, especially when office space taken up by the so-called sunshine industry declined 21 percent in the first quarter of 2017 before a modest rebound to 31 percent as of the first half of the year.