Macau’s daily casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) in the upcoming October Golden Week period could reach MOP900 million (US$112.1 million), says Morgan Stanley Asia Ltd. October’s full-month GGR could top MOP20 billion, up 1 percent year-on-year, added the institution in a memo this week.
This year, China’s State Council has designated the holiday as running from Tuesday October 1 to Monday October 7 inclusive.
“[Hotel] average daily rates (ADR) and occupancy for October 2024 Golden Week are tracking similar to October 2023 Golden Week,” wrote analysts Praveen Choudhary and Gareth Leung. “Compared to May Golden Week, ADR seemed stronger,” they added.
Macau’s May casino GGR was nearly MOP20.19 billion, marking the best monthly performance since January 2020, at the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the city’s GGR stood at MOP22.13 billion.
Morgan Stanley expects mass GGR during the October Golden Week “to recover to 114 percent to 115 percent of 2019 levels, with VIP at 23 percent to 25 percent, similar to second-quarter 2024”.
“This implies a daily GGR of MOP900 million to MOP915 million, 77 percent to 78 percent recovery rate,” stated the analysts.
According to the institution, the Macau market is showing “no sequential weakness in [hotel] ADR and occupancy” for the upcoming holiday break, which it said, “confirms Macau’s resilience compared to China consumer”.
The latter was a reference to consumer confidence on the Chinese mainland, which investment analysts say it has shown a “weaker sentiment” in recent months. Mainland China is the main feeder market for the Macau tourism sector.
Morgan Stanley said it compiled ADR and occupancy data for 28 hotels in Macau for the October Golden Week holiday, which showed that industry rates were “flattish” versus last year’s October Golden Week break, and “still 30-percent higher than October 2019 Golden Week”.
Hotel occupancy levels for next month’s Golden Week holiday break are likely to be “similar” to the comparable period in 2019 and 2023, added the institution.
The director of the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO), Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, said earlier this month that her department was hopeful that the city could log 100,000 visitors per day for the October Golden Week period.
Morgan Stanley suggested that MGTO’s estimate was “conservative”, since Macau recorded a daily “average of 118,000” visitor arrivals in August.
“In 2019, October Golden Week daily visitation was up 20 percent versus the average of that in July and August. Using the same ratio, this would mean 129,000 daily total visitation for the upcoming October Golden Week,” said the institution’s analysts.
