Scrupulously following the Beijing line, the former Portuguese colony is zealously deploying the “zero Covid” policy. Restrictions (quarantine for visitors from Hong Kong and overseas, negative PCR test less than 48 hours for those from mainland China, etc.) kept most visitors away, casino gamblers with their millions of dollars .
Only 4 million tourists have visited Macau since the start of 2022, compared to 39 million in 2019! A huge loss for this territory returned to China twenty-three years ago: Chinese players are the keystone of Macao, the only region of the country where gambling is authorized by Beijing. Before the pandemic, 70% of visitors came from mainland China and 20% from Hong Kong, now connected by a bridge. Today, players can be counted on the fingers of one hand among the hundreds of casino slot machines in the gaming rooms. In the first nine months of the year, revenue from Macau’s 40 gambling establishments fell 85% from its 2019 level, falling to $4 billion. Enough to flatten a local economy whose games constitute the spinal cord.
Macau’s casinos generated as much revenue in a day as Las Vegas’s in a week
Macau’s GDP shrunk by two-thirds. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Macau’s casinos generated as much revenue in a day as those in Las Vegas in a week! An extraordinary financial windfall for the government of this “gaming empire”. Gambling accounted for some 85% of tax revenue in 2019.
With the opening of huge hotel complexes and casinos, Macao was the nerve center of gambling in Asia. The announcement of an upcoming return to organized travel by Chinese tourists and the resumption of electronic visas by China have given hope to gaming operators and hoteliers. But any recovery will depend on a significant easing of anti-Covid restrictions, which is not on the cards. “Recovery remains a long way off,” analysts at Fitch Ratings estimate, for which gaming revenues for 2022, 2023 and 2024 will be 27%, 50% and 70% respectively of their 2019 level.
Macau’s golden age is clearly over and so is the jackpot.
