Macau Casinos Expect Higher GGR During Chinese New Year

The Chinese New Year (CNY) also referred to as the Spring Festival is the biggest festival in China and lasts for nearly two weeks. The CNY starts on January 27 and will finish on February the 15 – with Chinese nationals getting a 7 day holiday during this period to be with their family and celebrate.

It is also the period where a number of locals decide to cross over to neighbouring Macau and a significant number of these tourists will visit Macau’s casinos. Paulo Martins Chan, leader of Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau is confident that casinos in Macau will increase their gross gaming revenue (GGR) during the CNY holiday.

Macau’s casinos started to show signs of improvement from August 2016 after going through 27 consecutive months of GGR decline due to the anti-corruption crackdown launched by the Chinese government which targeted money laundering at Macau’s casinos. Local reports suggest that up to 58.3 million visitors will board flights during the CNY period, which is an increase of around 10 percent from the CNY in 2016. Government data suggests that there will be an increase of around 2.2 percent journeys during CNY 2017 as locals who have left their home in search of work, will want to travel back to their home state.

Macau’s hotels also witness a spike in hotel room bookings and getting a hotel room on the Cotai strip can be difficult during this period. The Cotai strip has witnessed the opening of two multi-billion dollar casino resorts towards the end of 2016 with Wynn Resorts opening its Wynn Palace resort in August and the Las Vegas Sands Corp opening its Parisian Macao facility in September.

The Civil Aviation Authority (AACM) is expecting a high number of visitors to come into Macau from Mainland China, Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan and Japan. As a result, the AACM has given approval for an additional 40 flights from these routes to the airlines who have applied for extra flights. The airlines who are reported to have applied for extra flights are Vietjet, Juneyao Airlines and Air Macau.

Macau’s government has pushed the six major casino operators in the city to diversify their offerings and add more non-gaming attractions to their list of services. Most of these casino operators have adhered to the advice of the government and it remains to be seen how much of revenue these non-gaming services generate during busy CNY period.

Adrian Sterne

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