Only 46.7 percent of a total 7,314 visitors who participated in a survey carried out by University of Macau (UM) said that they came to Macau for gambling – these respondents said they either “had gambled” or “planned to gamble” in local casinos during their visit.
The findings of the survey were announced on Thursday in a press conference held at the UM campus in Taipa, co-hosted by Michael Joseph Gift, associate dean of the university’s Faculty of Business Administration, Davis Fong Ka Chio, who heads the UM Institute for the Study of Commercial Gaming (ISCG), and Amy So Siu Ian, programme co-ordinator for UM’s hospitality management programmes.
The survey’s findings, titled “2011 Visitors Profile Study”, showed that about 61 percent of the respondents were mainlanders, 24 percent were Hongkongers, four percent were Taiwanese and nine percent were from elsewhere.
Fong said that 86.1 percent of the total number of respondents said they had never been to any casinos elsewhere, such as in Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and the United States.
Among the nearly 50 percent of visitors who came to Macau for gambling, only 12.6 percent of them owned a local casino membership card, and those who actually gambled spent an average of just 5,000 patacas, according to Fong.
According to the survey, on average the respondents visited Macau 3.9 times in the last 12 months, 48.2 percent visited Macau for the first time, 52.5 percent said they chose Macau as the only destination to visit during their trip, with the respondents spending an average of 2,729 patacas on shopping.
The survey’s findings also show that 68.6 percent of the respondent stayed overnight – 76.4 percent of them in hotels, with the average room price being 1,369 patacas.
The survey was carried out from January to December last year, when Macau received some 28 million visitors.
However, a senior gaming industry source told The Macau Post Daily on Thursday that “at least” three quarters of Macau’s adult visitors are gambling in local casinos.(macaunews)
