In a third-quarter earnings call on November 9, Wynn Resorts CEO Craig Billings noted higher performance in Macau’s VIP business during the Golden Week holiday, an indicator of pent-up demand among premium players.
According to Asia Gaming Brief, Wynn Macau posted turnover from its direct VIP business during the Chinese National Day holiday, which takes place every year during the first week of October.
While Wynn’s Macau operations took a US$163 million loss for the third quarter that ended on September 30, Billings expressed cautious optimism about the premium gaming segment.
“We saw some encouraging pockets of demand … particularly in our direct VIP business, where turnover was actually slightly above the comparable 2019 holiday period,” he said.
“We’re not living in a balloon, and the demand has to go somewhere,” he continued. “So we weren’t surprised to see an uptick in direct VIP growth in light of the market having no junkets. I don’t think it was surprising to us. We’ve seen it before over the course of the past year when there have been pockets of demand.”
Echoing recent comments by Melco Resorts chief Lawrence Ho, Wynn Macau President Ian Michael Coughlan said it’s too early to know how much Macau’s gaming industry will benefit from a resumption of travel from Mainland China, courtesy of restored e-Visas.
“They haven’t really gotten moving yet,” said Coughlan. “They reopened on 1 November and wouldn’t have had an impact on our October activity.
“The activity that we saw in our VIP area and premium mass is linked to a certain extent to returning former junket players. We also saw that in Chinese New Year, so we believe it is our premium positioning in the market and the facilities and services we offer that make us attractive to those players and there will be a return of them in the future.”
Coughlan added that the company was “very impressed” by the government’s management of a recent surge in Covid-19 infections. “When we had an outbreak in the summer … it was a six-week cycle of closure and recovery,” Coughlan said. This time, by contrast, “the government has managed to turn it around to two weeks.”
With the help of eVisas, he expects the market to “pick up pace in the coming months.”
Meanwhile, per Inside Asian Gaming, China’s National Health Commission has pledged to maintain its “Covid-zero” policy, which is seen by some as overly strict and detrimental to Macau’s chief industries of gaming, hospitality and tourism.
“We must be prudent in our approach to the prevention and control of Covid-19,” the commission stated, “and we must adhere unwaveringly to prevent the coronavirus from re-entering the country to cause a new epidemic.”
