Inside Asian Gaming

IAG SEP 2019年9月 亞博匯 65 特稿 A sit-in at Hong Kong International Airport for three days in August saw hundreds of flights cancelled. 八月，香港國際機場發生三天靜坐示威，致數百航班被取消。 “Clearly, what’s happening in Hong Kong is certainly going to impact business in the short term. There’s been disruption to people movement between Hong Kong and Macau and that looks like it’s going to continue for the next few weeks at least.” Yet the early indications are that the protests have had far less impact on Macau gaming revenues than was first feared. The situation was laid bare in a note from JP Morgan analysts DS Kim, Jeremy An and Christine Wang in which they suggested there “has not been a discernible slowdown in casino traffic yet” due to strong seasonality around the summer holidays. “How much drag on GGR are we talking about?” they continued. “We guesstimate the Hong Kong protests may hurt Macau GGR by about mid-single-digit, which should fade away gradually as peoplewill find alternative ways to visit Macau.” JP Morgan arrives at those numbers based on common visitation trends to Macau. The investment bank estimates total visitation to Macau in 2019 will come in at around 41 million of which only around 18% arrive from Hong Kong (with 70% from mainland China). As far as casino revenues are concerned, the impact is even smaller given that mainland Chinese visitors account for around 85% of GGR. By way of transport, JP Morgan says 12% to 13% of Macau’s mainland visitors come via Hong Kong, of which 8% to 9% use the recently opened Hong Kong- Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HZMB) and the remaining 4% to 5% by ferry. But “the actual impact on gaming demand should be smaller than on visitation, because: (1) those currently using the HZMB can simply avoid Hong Kong airport by traveling via Shenzhen airport (a direct ferry