Many Macau casinos visited by GGRAsia on Wednesday and Thursday (April 26 and 27) had plenty of customers on their mass-market gambling floors even before the holidays surrounding Labour Day on May 1. This festive season has been predicted by a local official to have some of the highest daily visitor volumes since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic three years ago.
Based on GGRAsia’s observations, baccarat as usual was the Macau customers’ favoured game. Even in the so-called ‘grind’ or ‘base’ mass segment, minimum bets were sometimes as high as HKD3,000 (US$382.17), with the lowest bets there still in the hundreds of Hong Kong dollars.
GGRAsia’s first observations were on Wednesday afternoon, drawn from visits to the casinos of the Cotai resort complexes Galaxy Macau, the Venetian Macao, City of Dreams Macau, MGM Cotai, Wynn Palace, and Grand Lisboa Palace.
The properties visited on Thursday morning were located in the downtown casino district on Macau peninsula, namely: Grand Lisboa, Wynn Macau, MGM Macau, and StarWorld Hotel.
On Cotai, not all tables were open, but most were. Cotai mass baccarat tables were asking at least HKD500 per game, i.e., per hand, with some costing as much as HKD3,000. The busiest of the mass baccarat tables had bet denominations starting at HKD500, rising to HKD2,000 in some cases.
Mass floors of most of the Cotai casinos GGRAsia visited were busy, with some gamblers or onlookers standing behind players at the tables. High-limit play areas were less busy. Occupancy at zones for slot machines and for electronic table games configured in so-called stadium formations, was also moderate.
On the Macau peninsula side, the available baccarat tables on mass gaming floors of the casinos visited were dealing in bets of at least HKD200, up to HKD3,000.
The busiest of the mass baccarat tables among the Macau peninsula casinos visited, had minimums of HKD300 up to HKD1,000. Player traffic appeared much lighter at these casinos’ high limit zones, and the slots areas.
Macau could achieve daily average casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) amounting to MOP750 million (US$92.8 million) during April 29 to May 1, the first three days of the Chinese Labour Day break, said Credit Suisse AG in a Monday memo.
China’s State Council has designated April 29 to May 3 inclusive, as a holiday on the mainland, a period sometimes referred to by the investment community as “May Golden Week”.
