It is good news for gambling industry in Macau as the New Year opened with a high and Macau reportedly recorded a rise in the gambling revenue. This is good news for the industry as well as for the casinos that have done good business. In past gambling and casino industry has already gone through a tough patch and they need better results to evolve from it.
In Macau, the government has reportedly revealed that it raked in $913.26 million in taxes from gambling last month, which was a 7.7% increase year-on-year, helped by a 3.1% rise to $2.4 billion in aggregated gross gaming revenues.
According to a report from Asia Gaming Brief citing official figures from the Financial Services Bureau, the January amount from the former Portuguese enclave’s over 30 casinos represented some 80.6% of the government’s total monthly revenues and followed a slight annual improvement in terms of the number of foreign tourists to nearly 31 million led by a 12.8% spike in vacationers from mainland China to 7.6 million.
After suffering through 26 months of year-on-year declines, Macau’s casinos saw their aggregated gross gaming revenues for August improve by 1.1% while a 7.4% swell was reported for September before October’s figure went up by 8.8%. These were all surpassed in November by a 14.4% boost to approximately $2.4 billion before December’s figure grew by 8% to hit almost $2.5 billion.
Asia Gaming Brief moreover cited authorized figures from the Statistics And Census Bureau that showed Macau had experienced a 13.3% swell year-on-year in non-gaming tourist spend for the fourth quarter to in excess of $1.85 billion due in large part to a 44.3% increase in shopping expenditure.
Non-gaming spend by overnight visitors reportedly leaped by 15.8% year-on-year to just over $1.5 billion while the $350.29 million shelled out by same-day tourists represented a boost of 3.6%. After shopping at 44.3%, accommodation expenditure made up the largest segment of non-gaming spending at 26.9% followed by food and beverage at 20.8%.
“Overnight visitors spending one night in Macau spend over 1.7 times more on gaming and non-gaming excluding transport than day-trippers while those staying two nights spend 3.3 times more,” read a statement from brokerage firm Sanford C Bernstein Company. “Sustainable growth in mass is achievable in Macau over the long-run on continued growth in Chinese overnight visitation and increasing premium mass.”
