Macau premium mass rooms showing strong demand from China

Macau premium mass rooms showing strong demand from China Aug 20, 2024 7:55:55 GMT -5

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Post by Blitz on Aug 20, 2024 7:55:55 GMT -5

Citi: Macau premium mass rooms showing strong demand from mainland Chinese players

by Ben Blaschke Tue 20 Aug 2024
www.asgam.com/index.php/2024/08/20/citi-macau-premium-mass-rooms-showing-strong-demand-from-mainland-chinese-players/

A recent crackdown on illegal money exchange operations across Macau has not impacted the lucrative premium mass segment with demand from mainland Chinese players still robust through August, according to Citibank analysts.

In a Monday note, George Choi and Ryan Cheung revealed a surge in both year-on-year and month-on-month premium mass wager observed during their most recent visit to Macau’s integrated resorts, including an increase in whale spotting with 25 big players observed betting as much as HK$600,000 (US$77,000) per hand.

“The fact that this happens after the Macau government’s decision to criminalize illegal money exchanges within casino premises means that most players, via legitimate channels, are still able to get their funds to the Macau casinos,” Choi and Cheung wrote.

“August is seasonally one of the strongest months in terms of visitation, and historically GGR in August is usually driven by player count. The 40% year-on-year higher player count this month likely implies that there were more casual premium pass players returning.

“This also leads to a minor 4% year-on-year dilution in wager per player, but we don’t think this implies a decrease in player quality.”

Citi’s premium mass survey for August observed a 35% year-on-year increase in total wager to HK$12.8 million (US$1.6 million), with 655 premium mass players spotted.

The slight decline in wager player is attributed to August being a month where “more casual, less keen players show up”.

The biggest player of the month – the one betting HK$600,000 per hand – was sighted at Dragon Palace at City of Dreams, with a friend seated alongside wagering HK$400,000 per hand.

However, Citi said Galaxy Macau continues to rank top in its premium mass survey with around 29% market share in total wager observed, up from ~25% in July.

Macau premium mass rooms showing strong demand from China Aug 20, 2024 7:57:47 GMT -5

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Post by Blitz on Aug 20, 2024 7:57:47 GMT -5

Guangdong outpaces rest of China in Macau tourism rebound

Aug 20, 2024 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck
www.ggrasia.com/guangdong-outpaces-rest-of-china-in-macau-tourism-rebound/

Macau’s recovery in January-to-July visitor volume from the Chinese mainland was led pace-wise by neighbouring Guangdong, with a full rebound relative to the same period in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, while the cohort of mainlanders from other parts of China showed a circa 67 percent comeback.

That is according to the data for the first seven months, after the July numbers were released on Tuesday by the city’s Statistics and Census Service.

In terms of all source markets in July – Hong Kong is the second-biggest component of Macau’s tourism sector – Macau received just above 3.02 million visitors, representing a 9.5-percent year-on-year increase, and a rise of 18.4 percent month-on-month.

The latest monthly tally took Macau’s aggregate visitor volume of the January to July period to 19.74 million, up by 37-percent year-on-year. This total also marked an 82.9-percent recovery of Macau’s inbound visitor volume in the same period in 2019, when the city saw 23.81 million visitor arrivals.

Around 70 percent of Macau’s visitor arrivals for the first seven months of this year – or 13.72 million – were from mainland China, according to the census service’s data.

Guangdong province – the most significant mainland feeder market, and next door to Macau – supplied nearly 7.19 million visitors during the first seven months of this year. This tally edged up by circa 0.5 percent from the equivalent period in 2019.

The mainland-visitor component from outside Guangdong totalled nearly 6.54 million in the January to July period this year; a 67-percent recovery from the same period in 2019, when Macau received 9.73 million mainland visitors from outside Guangdong province.

The Chinese provinces outside Guangdong that have been the most significant to Macau’s inbound visitor volume in the first seven months this year have been Shanghai city (542,986), Zhejiang province (491,737) and Jiangsu province (466,599). Around 66 percent of the visitors from these three places have visited Macau via China’s exit visa system for independent travellers known as the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS).

In March and then in May, a total of 10 Chinese cities distant to Macau were added to IVS, permitting independent travel either to that city or its neighbouring Chinese special adminstrative region, Hong Kong. But for Macau, few of those newly-added places are currently served by direct air links.

Those ten new IVS-status cities supplied in July 37,663 visitors to Macau, but only around half of those – or 18,837 – were actual IVS travellers, the census service noted in its latest update. The tally of these IVS travellers amounted to only 1.7 percent of the aggregate of 1.10 million IVS travellers from across the mainland in July, Macau statistics bureau data indicate.

Hong Kong supplied just over 589,000 visitors to Macau in July, a 10.9 percent decline year-on-year. In January to July, Macau received nearly 4.2 million visitors from Hong Kong, a tally that marked a circa 97-percent recovery to the equivalent period in 2019.