Image Source http://www.zeebiz.com/

Macau Hotelier Reaffirms Gaming Remains the Top Attraction

April 14, 2023 Macau Industry Updates

According to a prominent Macau hotelier, casinos were the ones that attracted the most visitors during Easter despite calls from the local government to diversify the local economy.

Innkeepers in the hotel business came to the conclusion that hotels with gambling components were nearly full and those that reduced their prices had an occupancy rate of more than 90% over the three days of the Easter holiday (7th to 9th April), according to Rutger Verschuren, vice chairman of the Macau Hotels Association.

The local government in Macau wanted to diversify its economy and tourism, which are heavily dependent on the gambling industry, once the COVID limitations were lifted there. To do this, the authorities demanded that gaming operators increase their investments in non-gaming components and attract more foreign tourists.

The majority of the hotels without casinos weren’t filled over the holiday, according to Rutger Verschuren, indicating that the occupancy rate ranged from 60 to 80 percent. He acknowledged that visitors to Macau came to gamble, despite the fact that integrated resorts (IR) with casinos have loosened the rules and that casinos provide high rollers free hotel rooms in addition to actively “filling rooms aggressively” to increase gaming income.

Over the six-day holiday (April 5–10), Macau saw 481,765 visitor arrivals, or an average of 80,295. Despite the upbeat statistics, Verschuren claimed that “a large percentage, well over 50%” of visitors only stay for one day.

The Macau Tourism Office (MGTO) started a program that offers subsidies to tourists, initially to Hong Kong residents, and has since been expanded to foreigners and visitors from Taiwan in an effort to buck this trend and “encourage visitors to stay overnight” in the territory.

In accordance with their new, ten-year contracts, six casino operators have committed to spending $15 billion, with non-gaming expenditures expected to outpace gaming expenditures by a factor of more than ten.