VIP rooms at Parisian, Studio City
Despite a push for more mass-market, mainstream and even family-oriented attractions in Macau, the Las Vegas Sands Corp. has confirmed that its new Parisian Macao resort, scheduled to open later this year, will include VIP junket rooms that cater to high rollers. This follows Melco Crown Entertainment’s turnabout; it recently elected to add VIP tables at its Studio City resort on Cotai, which generated headlines last fall as the first major resort in Macau to open without one.
Macau is in the third year of an historic downturn, due to a crackdown on money laundering and corruption in the city that chased away many VIP gamblers.
The Motley Fool reported that Melco Crown, which eschewed VIP tables when its Hollywood-themed Studio City debuted in October, was forced to reverse its position “in the wake of horrible first-quarter earnings results.
“With Las Vegas Sands also saying VIPs will be part and parcel of the Parisian, it’s clear that Macau, or rather Cotai, can’t be an either-or proposition,” the report continued.
According to GGRAsia, the Macau government’s fiscal surplus is down 32.1 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2016 to MOP17.26 billion (US$2.16 billion) as gaming revenues continue to plummet. The decline began in mid-2014, when the Mainland Chinese government under President Xi Jinping excoriated Macau for its reliance on a single industry for most of its tax revenues. Direct taxes from gaming brought in 82.8 percent of the Macau government’s total revenue in the six months leading to June 30. The government collected a total of MOP39.61 billion in direct taxes from gaming in the first half of 2016, down by 13.4 percent year-on-year.
As revenues slow, costs have been rising; in the first six months of the year, public expenditures reached MOP30.59 billion, up 2.3 percent year-on-year. Macau Secretary for Economy and Finance Lionel Leong Vai Tac has said overall casino GGR will continue to fall into the second half of 2016, but at a slower rate. Overall, the government expects GGR to come in at MOP200 billion for 2016, a year-on-year drop of 13.4 percent.
VIP baccarat is still the main source of gross revenue from the city’s casinos for the year to date, according to data from the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
Meanwhile, more than 2.3 million visitors traveled to Macau in June, almost a 5 percent increase year-on-year. Mainland Chinese tourists increased by 5.7 percent year-on-year; visitors from South Korea and Taiwan increased by 49.5 percent and 19.1 percent respectively. Visitors from Hong Kong decreased 2.3 percent.
