Forgive us for withholding our cries of jubilation for the time being.
It was with plenty of interest that WGM noted the significant rise in visitors to Macau over Chinese New Year, with the Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) reporting a 4.3 percent year-on-year increase to 793,598 visitors during the week of 7 to 13 February 2016.
However, this coincided with a 12 percent drop in visitors to Hong Kong for Chinese New Year … which got us thinking – could the disparity between the two destinations actually be the result of outside events?
A theory we’ve been mulling in the WGM bunker is that Hong Kong’s fishball riot – which saw police firing shots in the air near rioters after a crackdown on illegal food vendors selling fishballs and other delicacies during Chinese New Year – may have played its part.
If this is the case, it stands to reason that some people who had originally planned to visit Hong Kong changed their destination to Macau at the last minute instead.
The theory is supported by the fact that even though visitors increased, daily gaming revenues actually dropped by 20 percent from 12 months earlier, suggesting that those who arrived to bolster visitor numbers weren’t in Macau to gamble at all.
Although we here at WGM would love nothing more than to see Macau finally embark on a long-waited recovery, we’ve seen such false dawns before and are yet to be convinced that the rise in stock prices we’ve seen since Chinese New Year is a sign of any genuine recovery.
Time will tell!
