The return of visitation from China lifted Macau’s casinos to MOP7.27 billion in gaming revenue in October (US$910.9 million).
The total represented a decline of 72.5 percent versus the same month last year, but it was 229 percent greater September’s tally, and it was the industry’s best month since before the Covid crisis hit in January.
From January through October, gaming revenue has totaled MOP45.87 billion ($5.74 billion), down 81.4 percent compared with the first 10 months of 2019, but it’s clear that the recovery of the world’s largest casino market, whose revenues totaled $36.6 billion last year, is picking up momentum.
The difference has been the reopening of the borders with mainland China, which were effectively sealed off for months through separate actions, including mandatory quarantines, imposed by Beijing and the government of Macau both to contain the spread of the virus, which was first identified in China last December.
China is the principal source of visitation to Macau, and the containment measure that proved especially damaging was Beijing suspension of visas for individual tourist travel to casino hub from 49 mainland cities. At the worst of the lockdown in the spring and early summer, visits slowed to a trickle of a couple hundred a day and gaming revenue plunged by 90-95 percent per month.
The tourist visas were restored beginning in August, and are now available nationally, and as more mainland cities reinstate them, and the process of issuing them steadily speeds up, visitation is bouncing back. In October, it improved to more than 20,000 a day on average, which is around 20 percent of 2019’s daily tally.
Hotel occupancy has responded in kind, improving to 40 percent for the month compared with September’s 16.4 percent.
Meanwhile, in its as yet unreleased budget report, the Macau government expects the local casino industry to generate $16.25 billion in gross gaming revenue for 2021, according to a report by public broadcaster Radio Macau/TDM.
The bill’s accompanying report notes that the country’s gaming sector still needs to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Macau’s economy. The government also predicted that the situation of Macau’s economy next year would remain “critical”, according to the report.
Macau’s casinos generated 292 billion patacas in gross gaming revenue last year. In the first nine months of 2020, the casino industry recorded 38.6 billion patacas in gross gaming revenue, a decline of 82.5 percent year-on-year.
The 2021 budget bill predicts the government’s direct gaming tax income to be about 45.5 billion patacas, about half the amount originally budgeted for this year. In the first nine months of 2020, the government took in 23.4 billion patacas, a year-on-year decline of 72.6 percent.
