MGM China anticipates being nearly fully booked out at its Macau integrated resorts, MGM Macau and MGM China, during the upcoming May Golden Week holiday period in the latest indication of the SAR’s accelerating recovery.
The company outlined its local recovery during parent firm MGM Resorts’ 1Q21 earnings call Thursday morning (Asia time), with MGM China President and Chief Operating Officer Hubert Wang revealing May Golden Week is already exceeding Chinese New Year bookings as well as last year’s October Golden Week and the western New Year holiday period.
“The May Golden week demand is actually pretty strong,” he said. “We anticipate reaching almost full occupancy, which is similar to what we saw in 2019, for the upcoming Golden Week holiday in early May.
“It’s also very important to point out that the demand from our high-end customers remains strong from premium mass to in-house VIP. A lot of our suite products and villas are already overbooked.
“Looking forward, the momentum actually started in March with the market starting to pick up and in the coming months with the vaccine rate rising and e-visa application process coming back, these will be the contributors to the further recovery.”
Fellow Macau concessionaire Melco Resorts & Entertainment offered a similar view of the May Golden Week holiday during its own earnings call overnight.
“We are still a little behind where we were in 2019 but in terms of what we are seeing since March, it has been very strong for us,” said Melco’s COO, Macau Resorts, David Sisk.
“We started off a little bit slowly in April with some of the Easter holidays but it’s really picked up quite a bit over the last couple of weeks.
“We think that’s a strong indicator as we head into the May Golden Week and as we look out towards the rest of the year I think we are fairly confident that the market is starting to recovery, particularly on the mass side.
“Hopefully by the end of the fourth quarter we will be back to where we were in 2019.”
