Spending in Macao’s casino sector is inching closer to a full post-pandemic recovery, with recent data from CreditsSight, a research offshoot of the Fitch Group, indicating that the gaming expenditure per visitor had reached roughly 93 percent of its pre-pandemic level.
Multiple media reports that cite data from the firm indicate that gaming spending for each visitor during the first five months of 2024 came to an average of US$841. This figure exceeds the US$803 registered in 2023 and marks a recovery of 93 percent in comparison to the initial five months of 2019.
While the numbers still falls short of the US$920 per person that was recorded for the entire year of 2019, CreditSight remains optimistic that various recently implemented initiatives to encourage tourism in Macao will help sustain stable, short-term growth.
[See more: Mass market games account for more than 76 percent of second quarter GGR]
It said that initiatives such as the Hengqin-Macao multiple-entry visas “will help support additional traffic from mainland China, which is running at 81 percent of 2019 levels year-to-date.” The mainland is by far Macao’s largest tourist market.
CreditSight meanwhile forecasts that gross gaming revenue (GGR) could top 234 billion patacas (US$29 billion) this year, a total that is roughly 8 percent higher than the $216 billion (US$26.8 billion) predicted by the government.
The research firm noted that Macao’s GGR totalled around 114 billion patacas (US$14.2 billion) in the first half of this year, stating that “we expect to see incremental growth in market wide GGR on the back of ongoing increases in visitations and steady spend per visitor.”
