Cotai fared better than the peninsula
Typhoon Hato made landfall in the gaming hub of Macau last week, killing at least 16 people, injuring more than 150 others and causing extensive flooding and damage to the Chinese territory.
“It’s a calamity, the losses are high and a lot of buildings need repair,” said Macau lawmaker Jose Pereira Coutinho of the storm that hit Wednesday, August 23. “People were just swimming, they cried for help. There were no boats. The water came so suddenly.”
He added that the city’s government “reacted so slowly and so badly.”
According to China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency, winds of 100 miles per hour drove almost 27,000 people to emergency shelters, and waves reached 30 feet in the China Sea. Other reports said the gale-force winds exceeded 124 miles per hour.
“Compared to other typhoons, Hato moved fast, quickly grew more powerful and caused massive amounts of rainfall,” Guangdong meteorologist Wu Zhifang told Xinhua.
Damage was most severe in the city’s historic downtown Peninsula area, where the streets are narrow and infrastructure is aging. Union Gaming Research analyst Grant Govertsen said downtown casinos “were either closed or barely operating,” while resorts in the newer Cotai district were not as strongly affected. Some 2 million homes initially lost power due to the storm; a day later, power utility CEM said some 40,000 customers were still without power because of damaged electrical lines. All air traffic was suspended Wednesday, but resumed gradually on Thursday.
In its report on the storm, GGRAsia shared photos posted on social media showing casinos flooded or otherwise damaged by Hato. They included Studio City, a property operated by Melco Resorts and Entertainment on the Cotai Strip, which sustained damage to its entryway; City of Dreams, another Melco Resorts venue, where a number of windows appeared to have been damaged; and Galaxy Macau, a Galaxy Entertainment Group property, which was struck by uprooted trees.
In a statement released the night of the typhoon, Melco informed GGRAsia that its properties “suffered minimal external damage which will be repaired over the next few days. City of Dreams and Studio City remain fully operational. Altira has suffered from some power shortages, so we have decided to take pre-emptive measures by relocating guests to our Cotai properties.”
Grant Bowie, CEO of MGM China Holdings Ltd., told the Macao Daily News that operations at MGM Macau were suspended from Wednesday night until Thursday morning. The same was true at Wynn Macau on the peninsula, but operations at Wynn Palace, the firm’s Cotai property, were not interrupted.
Sands China Ltd. said its properties were affected by a power and water outage on Wednesday night, but mentioned no disruption to its casino operations.
Govertsen said both ferry terminals in Macau were damaged and border crossings were halted for the duration of the storm.
“The typhoon resulted in significant damage across all parts of Macau and most outdoor spaces in Macau (casinos or otherwise) will require extensive cleanup over the coming days, while we would expect many roads to be closed as trees and debris are removed,” Govertsen wrote.
Stifel Nicolaus analyst Steven Wieczynski said it’s too early to assess the impact of the storm on the gaming market, which has enjoyed 12 straight months of increases after a 26-month recession. “Although the full extent of the storm’s impact is hard to estimate at this point, we fully expect storm-related disruptions, notably dislocations in the transit system, to create some noise in the market’s August gross gaming revenue comparisons,” Wieczynski wrote.
