J.P. Morgan gaming analyst DS Kim says that the adding of more hotel rooms will be key for the continued growth of Macau’s gaming and non-gaming industry.
Kim was speaking in an interview with Bloomberg, mainly discussing the latest gaming law amendments, which he found to be an overall positive for the Macau gaming industry – namely the decision to keep taxes as they are.
When asked about non-gaming developments and whether there is a risk for Macau’s casino operators to be over-investing in this area, Kim noted that hotel investment will be one of the most important factors in growing Macau’s gaming industry.
“Even pre-covid, in Macau there were less than 30,000 casino hotel rooms, we received almost 40 million guests to Macau back in 2019,” said Kim in an interview with Bloomberg.
“Looking at the Las Vegas Strip alone, they have more than 150,000 rooms, and are getting similar amounts of tourists, and what happens is that the length of stay in Vegas is much longer. Around 2,3 4 times longer than that of Macau,” said Kim.
“As we get more tourists staying longer in Macau, naturally they are going to spend more from a non-gaming and gaming perspective. This is a net positive for the industry.”
Despite the fall of junkets in Macau, DS Kim says he believes the industry is healthy enough to eventually recover to, or even exceed its pre-pandemic GGR once borders reopen, given the relatively low penetration rate to the mass market in China.
However, he says near-term visibility on the timing and scale of reopening is very low.
