In Macau, the government has reportedly revealed that it raked in $913.26 million in taxes from gambling last month, which was a 7.7% increase year-on-year, helped by a 3.1% rise to $2.4 billion in aggregated gross gaming revenues.
According to a report from Asia Gaming Brief citing official figures from the Financial Services Bureau, the January amount from the former Portuguese enclave’s over 30 casinos represented some 80.6% of the government’s total monthly revenues and followed a slight annual improvement in terms of the number of foreign tourists to nearly 31 million led by a 12.8% spike in vacationers from mainland China to 7.6 million.
After suffering through 26 months of year-on-year declines, Macau’s casinos saw their aggregated gross gaming revenues for August improve by 1.1% while a 7.4% swell was reported for September before October’s figure went up by 8.8%. These were all surpassed in November by a 14.4% boost to approximately $2.4 billion before December’s figure grew by 8% to hit almost $2.5 billion.
Asia Gaming Brief moreover cited authorized figures from the Statistics And Census Bureau that showed Macau had experienced a 13.3% swell year-on-year in non-gaming tourist spend for the fourth quarter to in excess of $1.85 billion due in large part to a 44.3% increase in shopping expenditure.
Non-gaming spend by overnight visitors reportedly leaped by 15.8% year-on-year to just over $1.5 billion while the $350.29 million shelled out by same-day tourists represented a boost of 3.6%. After shopping at 44.3%, accommodation expenditure made up the largest segment of non-gaming spending at 26.9% followed by food and beverage at 20.8%.
“Overnight visitors spending one night in Macau spend over 1.7 times more on gaming and non-gaming excluding transport than day-trippers while those staying two nights spend 3.3 times more,” read a statement from brokerage firm Sanford C Bernstein Company. “Sustainable growth in mass is achievable in Macau over the long-run on continued growth in Chinese overnight visitation and increasing premium mass.”