Macau can expect ‘Super Golden Week’ boost: analysts

The forecast for Macau’s National Day-Mid-Autumn Festival holiday week looks pretty golden.

Junkets flush with high rollers, full hotels charging five times their usual prices and brand-new entertainment options have the potential to make the Golden Week the most lucrative in at least the past decade for the world’s biggest gaming hub, analysts and industry officials said last week. The calendar also helps: this year’s holiday period lasts eight days instead of seven, making it a “Super Golden Week.”

The expected rush is more good news for Macau, currently riding a streak of 13 straight months with gaming revenue growth. The city is benefiting from economic expansion in mainland China that’s outpacing the official 6.5 percent target, pent-up demand after last month’s typhoons and the central government’s decision not to restrict visas before the upcoming Communist Party of China (CPC) leadership gathering in Beijing.

“Macau’s gaming business will be strong during the Golden Week,” said Lawrence Ho Yau Lung, chairman and chief executive officer of Melco Resorts & Entertainment. “China’s economy is improving, there’s more visitation to Macau, and the city has better infrastructure now.”

Junket operators, who provide credit to their big gamblers, concur. Suncity Group, Macau’s largest such operator, expects its October betting volume to surge between 30 and 35 percent from last year to about HK$150 billion, boosted by Golden Week, said Andrew Lo, executive director of the group’s listed vehicle, Suncity Group Holdings.

That’s about the same level as before the corruption crackdown started by President Xi Jinping in 2014 – a campaign that spotlighted government officials’ spending in Macau and triggered a two-year slump in revenue growth.

Eighty percent of Macau’s three- to five-star hotels are fully booked during the October 1-8 holiday, and more reservations were expected in the coming days, the Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) said in a statement on Friday. It expects the number of tourists during the holiday week to increase by as much as 5 percent from about 1.2 million visitors last year.

Those still accepting bookings mostly have suites costing as much as about HK$10,000 a night, according to a check of hotel booking websites Expedia and Booking.com. Just two weeks later in October, those same rooms can be reserved for about HK$2,000.

“Hotel rooms booked by Suncity have been fully taken by clients during the Golden Week holiday,” Lo said. “Suncity expects it may need to pay for extra rooms at high room rates to meet the solid holiday demand.”

And there are new sights for some Golden Week visitors to see. Las Vegas Sands’ new US$2.9 billion Parisian, which opened in September 2016, helped bolster the group’s better-than-expected revenue in the second quarter. The Parisian opened a month after Steve Wynn’s US$4.2 billion Wynn Palace.

The natural disaster and suppressed August receipts were among the few blips this year for the only Chinese territory where casino gambling is legal. Revenue growth accelerated during the three months prior because of more spending by high rollers and an increase in overnight visitors.

“This Golden Week will be the best in recent years,” said Versiglia Chong, a sales director at Macau-based VT Travel Agency. “We’ll see a sea of people at the ferry terminals, in Golden Lotus Square and along the Cotai Strip.”

Last year, the number of visitors from the mainland rose 6.9 percent to 970,000 during the week, officially known as the National Day holiday. That’s the most tourists from the mainland in at least 10 years.

Wynn Macau expects a “very strong Golden Week” as its two properties, Wynn Macau and Wynn Palace, are fully booked through the period, the company said in a statement. Its Hong Kong-traded shares have risen 71 percent this year, compared with a 25 percent increase in the benchmark Hang Seng Index.

What’s feeding this beast is a mainland Chinese economy that expanded by 6.9 percent in both the first and second quarters of this year. Also, the number of mainland Chinese visitors to Macau surpassed 2 million in both July and August, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Golden Week could be the busiest holiday in Macau of any holiday during the past four years, Karen Tang, a research analyst with Deutsche Bank, said in a September 20 report. That assessment was based on hotel bookings.

Revenue from high rollers has grown by more than 30 percent in the past four months, even as the central government tried to curtail capital outflows that topped US$816 billion last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The central government said last month it would prohibit or restrict domestic companies from making overseas investments in sectors including the gaming industry, real estate, hotels and entertainment.

Still, that’s not fazing Macau legislator Jose Maria Pereira Coutinho.

“No policies can hurt Macau in the long term,” he said. “Demand is there, Chinese customers love gambling, and the casino industry can eventually figure out ways to avoid the impact of the regulations, including restrictions on capital outflow.”

Tourists throng the narrow Rua de S. Paulo yesterday afternoon. Photo: Iong Tat Choi