Hoteliers optimistic
China’s extended Golden Week holiday kicked off last week with weak retail sales and bleak forecasts, according to the South China Morning Post. In fact, reported the publication, some retailers called it “the worst ever”—at least on Day One of the seven-day national holiday. A Hong Kong pharmacist said, “It is a 70 percent slump. Worse still, it has just started.”
Joe Cheong, of the China Travel Service Ltd. in Macau, said more relaxed visa rules in Japan and South Korea and the depreciation of their currencies mean fewer people are coming to Hong Kong and Macau. “For a weeklong holiday, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Macau are no longer the top destinations for Chinese visitors,” Cheong said. “They have become wealthier and wish to travel farther.”
The number of tourists from Mainland China to Macau dropped by more than 4 percent from January through August of this year, but in August, the average stay increased marginally, from 0.1 days to 1.1 days.
According to the Macau Business Daily, Angela Leong On Kei, executive director of SJM Holdings, said she does not expect the gaming business in the city to benefit from the extended holiday, although the food and beverages and MICE industry could do well.
But some observers continue to have a positive outlook. Lui Che Woo, chairman and founder of casino firm Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd., told BBC News, “I think the situation in Macau has already calmed down. It has stabilized. I am optimistic that in one year or two years, it will improve.”
And Members of the Macau Hoteliers and Innkeepers Association told the Macau Business Daily that cheaper room rates should mean a healthy occupancy rate during the holiday. “Hotel occupancy for the first half of this year has not been doing too well,” acknowledged Chan Chi Kit, association president. “But since mid-September, a period when school resumes and people return to their workplace, occupancy has actually recovered from the previous months to reach over 80 percent,” and possibly could jump as high as 90 percent for Golden Week.
As September ended, UBS Securities Asia projected that the results for third-quarter mass gaming revenue in Macau will also be good news. The firm is looking for growth of about 4 percent quarter-on-quarter, “marking the first sequential increase since the first quarter 2014,” said UBS.
Macau has endured 15 straight months of year-on-year declines in gaming revenue, a result of President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign, a softer Chinese economy, weaker currency, and other factors. Meanwhile, the Macau government continues to demand more nongaming attractions in the world’s most famous gaming town. Last month, Macau Secretary for Economy and Finance Lionel Leong told representatives of the six casino concessionaires the government is looking for “the healthy development of the sector and employment opportunities for local people.” According to Gamingtoday.com, the concessionaires promised to “propel the development of nongaming features and support locally made products.”
