The Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) reports 31.5m (+7.5%) visitors to Macau last year and DFS Group Chairman & CEO Philippe Schaus is very optimistic.

 

MGTO made the announcement at its press conference earlier this week, while Macau’s business sector also acknowledged that official gambling and casino revenues declined for the first time since the business was deregulated back in 2001.

 

Revenues fell by 2.6% last year to $44bn, as many stayed away following the Chinese government’s anti-corruption drive to discourage ’junket gambling’.

 

[This is where individuals play with money provided in pools by ‘backers’ on the Mainland – a practice strongly frowned upon by the Beijing Government that has pointed to money laundering in the past and now believes gamblers should only play with their own money].

 

 

CHANGING VISITOR DYNAMICS

The absence of these ‘junket players’ in 2014 is also being seen as a positive move towards turning Macau into a genuinely more friendly and diverse family-friendly destination, along with new hotel development and better transport infrastructure – such as the rail bridge currently being built to link Hong Kong directly with Macau.

 

DFS Group Chairman & CEO Philippe Schaus told TRBusiness quite recently that he believes that a much broader family orientated visitor base is the future for Macau’s tourism industry and he says all the signs are there that this will be the way it evolves. [DFS currently operates two T Galleria stores in Macau, at the Shoppes at Four Seasons and the City of Dreams-ED].

 

Schaus said: “Right now it has reached its limit of capacity because of a stagnant number of hotel rooms. Hotel capacity is completely utilised. There will be almost a doubling of hotel rooms over the next years and many more people will flock into Macau,” he said. “So we see that there is a lot of potential there with the new projects coming up for many of the brands.”

 

Asked how he sees the infrastructure growing to support more visitors – primarily Chinese – to Macau in future, Schaus said: “First of all there has been a crackdown on the junket operators and that has affected a part of the very high-end level gamblers. If you take that away for a second, then you see that Macau has been continuing to grow on high rollers – and not the junket operators – but the people who play with their own money.

 

 

BETTER INFRASTRUCTURE = MORE TOURISM

“That market has been growing up to the limit of the hotel capacity and that’s why right now the minimum for most of the casinos – the minimum amount you have to gamble with – is much, much higher. It’s over $200, but when you are in Las Vegas it is like $10 or $20 and even in Singapore it is $25, $30 or $40. So what it means is that there is a limitation in Macau that is defined by the hotel rooms.”

 

He believes this Macau gaming entry limitation will lower as more hotel rooms come on line, so making it increasingly attractive and affordable for more people to visit Macau. In addition, he also points to much improved entertainment and restaurants in Macau, plus the new bridge that is being built between Hong Kong and Macau.

 

This is a huge feat of engineering which is scheduled for completion this year to carry high-speed train passengers into Hong Kong and then onto Macau. All of this is against a background where the Macau Government Tourist Office confirmed this week that it remains committed to positioning Macau as ‘a World Centre of Tourism and Leisure’.

 

Meanwhile, for the whole of 2014, visitor arrivals to Macau reached a record high of 31,525,632, up by 7.5% year-on-year; same-day visitors amounted to 16,959,949, sharing 54% of the total. Visitors from Mainland China (21,252,410), the Republic of Korea (554,521) and Japan (299,849) increased year-on-year, while those from Hong Kong (6,426,608) and Taiwan (953,753) decreased.

 

Visitors from the United States recorded a year-on-year increase; however, those from Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom all registered decreases. In 2014, the average length of stay of visitors remained stable at 1.0 day compared with 2013.

 

The average room rate being charges by three to five-star hotels last year was equivalent to US$199.90 (+8.5%) and more than 12m visitors to Macau arrived in tour groups last year.