GGRAsia – Return of tours good for mass floor traffic: observers

Return of tours good for mass floor traffic: observers

Feb 03, 2023 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

The imminent return of package tours from mainland China will not only help boost Macau’s tourism businesses, but is also expected to help casinos gain more foot traffic in their mass gaming floors, said two industry observers in comments to GGRAsia.

Package tours from mainland China to Macau and Hong Kong will resume on Monday, February 6, according to a Friday announcement from China’s State Council. Tour groups to Macau – following almost three years of Covid-19 associated suspension – would now be allowed to come from all of mainland’s provinces, stated the director of the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO), Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes.

“The resumption [of mainland package tours] is definitely good news: recovering foot traffic for casinos here is really important and their comeback will help with that,” said Hoffman Ma Ho Man, deputy chairman of Success Universe Group Ltd, in comments to GGRAsia.

The Hong Kong-listed firm promotes Ponte 16, a casino hotel near Macau’s Inner Harbour that uses the gaming licence of SJM Holdings Ltd.

“With the resumption of package tours, we can expect the trend of increasing number of visitors as seen in Macau during the Chinese New Year break to be sustained. That’s important because with the prevailing limit on cash that mainland Chinese travellers can take outbound, the more of them coming here, the better it is for us,” Mr Ma added.

The flow of inbound package group travellers could help casino resorts in the city to secure a “stable” source of clients, which would be significant for their day-to-day operation, local gaming scholar Ryan Ho Hong Wai told GGRAsia.

Before the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, the positive impact of mainland package tours was more “evident” at so-called satellite casino properties than at large-scale casino resorts run by the gaming concessionaires, Mr Ho said.

What the appetite will be for casino gambling among returning mainland tour group travellers, and how much they would spend while in Macau, will be a key factor to observe, stated both observers.

At Ponte 16, members of a tour group could spend “up to HKD2,000” (US$255) in gambling in pre-Covid-19 times, said Mr Ma. Such patrons would usually spend “two to three hours” on a gaming floor, he added.

In 2019 – the immediate trading year before the Covid-19 pandemic – Macau received a total of 6.49 million mainland tourists as part of tour groups, accounting for 16.5 percent of the city’s 39.4 million visitors that year, according to official data. The resumption of tour groups is expected to boost demand for the city’s travel trade, particularly during the low season, said on Friday Macau’s Secretary for Economy and Finance, Lei Wai Nong.

In comments to Chinese-language radio service of public broadcaster TDM, the president of the Macau Travel Industry Council, Andy Wu Keng Kuong, said he expected a daily average of circa “10,000” visitors from mainland China to Macau as part of tour groups.

He added that some tours from Guangdong province and other mainland provinces had already planned trips to Macau, scheduled to arrive as soon as the second week of February.