Inside Asian Gaming

IAG MAR 2020年3月 亞博匯 58 COLUMNISTS I magine a scenario where Macau GGR drops 95% year-on-year, where its hotel occupancy drops to 16%, where 28 hotels stop taking guests, where daily visitation falls to an all-time low of just 2,600 tourists and where all 41 Macau casinos are shut down. If the Managing Editor of IAG had read this article a month ago, it would sound so unbelievable he would ban me from writing ever again! Unfortunately, this is the scenario that has faced Macau over the past month. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in mainland China severely impacted Macau’s gaming industry and forced it to face a new social and economic reality when Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng announced the closure of all casinos for 15 days from 5 February 2020. “This is a difficult decision, but we have to do it, for the health of our Macau residents,” he said during the press conference where the bombshell announcement was made. Although such a decision is not unprecedented – authorities ordered the temporary closure of all casinos for 33 hours during Typhoon Mangkhut in September 2018 for safety reasons – the duration of such closure is unheard of. Before the casino closure was announced, mainland Chinese authorities had already stopped issuing individual visas for tourists coming to Macau, with no outlook as to when such decision shall be lifted. Ferry services to and from Hong Kong were suspended and several countries and regions forbid or limited travel to and from Macau. It is well known that the gaming industry in Macau is highly dependent on visitors from mainland China (from a total number of 39 million visitors that entered Macau in 2019, more than 27.5 million were from the mainland). More than 80% of Macau’s annual government revenue derives from the special gaming tax and other contributive obligations of the gaming concessionaires. The actual financial impact of this business disruption is still unknown: as a comparison, the SARS