Macau has removed the mandatory quarantines that had limited visitation from more than a dozen cities in China.
Authorities in the casino hub said that as a result of improvements in the Covid situation on the mainland, they now consider the cities as “low risk” for transmission of the potentially deadly virus.
Residents of those cities wishing to visit Macau had been required to enter 14-day quarantine on arrival at local hotels designated for that purpose.
The quarantines have been an obstacle to the ability of the territory’s casino-centric economy to recover from the pandemic, a process largely reliant on visitation from the mainland.
In another sign that the recovery is gaining traction, it’s reported that gaming revenue picked up significantly at the end of the weeklong Lunar New Year holiday, historically the busiest travel period of the year in China and an especially lucrative event for Macau’s casinos.
Despite a 65 percent in year-on-year visitation during the February 11-17 holiday, “tail-end demand was quite decent,” said JP Morgan analysts D.S. Kim and Derek Choi.
“Based on our checks, (gaming revenue) for the first 21 days of February is estimated at MOP5.8 billion [US$725 million] or MOP276 million per day, versus MOP250 million to MOP260 million in recent months.”
However, the GGR run rate for the third week of February had risen to MOP466 million per day, they said, more than double the figure recorded in the previous two weeks.
Analysts Vitaly Umansky and Tianjiao Yu with brokerage Sanford Bernstein sounded a similarly positive note, saying “Macau GGR increased significantly during the third week of February.”
They added, “Macau will continue to experience headwinds during the first half of 2021, but we see a strong improvement beginning in the second half as Covid-related travel constrictions begin to fall away.”
