What a difference a year makes. As I sit here penning this piece, I am starkly reminded of the same time 12 months ago when Macau – still closed off to the outside world – was wracked with COVID; so much so that the entire IAG team bar one solitary person was home sick.
At that time Macau was still filled with fear and uncertainty around the virus it had tried so hard to keep at bay for three years, and we were still weeks from the city’s sudden reopening on 8 January 2023.
But fast forward a year and the outlook couldn’t be any different. From the depths of despair, Macau is on track to record GGR of more than US$22 billion in 2023, still only around 61% of pre-COVID levels but four-times more than in 2022 and with solid profitability to match.
Government estimates place visitor arrivals for FY23 at around 28 million, compared to just 5.7 million a year earlier, and all expectations are that these numbers will continue to grow at lightning pace through the year ahead.
It’s a similar trend in the Philippines, where industry GGR has already returned to pre-pandemic levels of more than US$5 billion, while annual visitation numbers had exceeded official full-year estimates by mid-November.
The Philippines’ Department of Tourism has already set an ambitious target of 7.7 million visitor arrivals in 2024 – up from just over 5 million this past year – while gaming industry analysts believe GGR is on an upwards pathway towards US$10 billion by 2027, making it a clear No.2 in Asia behind the Macau SAR.
Singapore, too, is soaring, with Marina Bay Sands (MBS) reporting record mass-gaming revenues and rapidly closing in on annual Adjusted EBITDA of US$2 billion.
Experts are predicting further growth of around 10% for the Singapore gaming market in 2024, while the long-term prospects have prompted both MBS and Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) to embark on big-money upgrade and expansion projects. RWS operator Genting Singapore recently increased its planned spend on RWS 2.0 from an original US$3.3 billion to US$5 billion in an incredible show of bullishness.
Even South Korea, whose foreigner-only casino industry was arguably the hardest hit of all during the pandemic, is enjoying a golden period on Asia’s regional tourism boom and the long-awaited return of Chinese visitors.
Those regional operators who were in the middle of major integrated resort developments when COVID hit must have harbored deep concerns in recent years, but such misgivings have now surely dissipated, and we are again celebrating the openings of these new properties with fervor: Melco’s Studio City Phase 2, Galaxy Macau Phase 3 and Mohegan Inspire all opened their doors in 2023, while Solaire Resort North in Manila’s Quezon City awaits – we are told – in the early months of 2024, with more to come in the years ahead.
I spent eight days in Las Vegas in December, staying at Wynn Las Vegas for the WPT World Championship, and I’ve never seen casino floors so busy – to the point, at times, that I could barely move. It’s been more than two years now since the US decided it’d had enough of COVID, and the travel boom that followed is showing no signs of slowing.
That’s great news for Asia as we dream of what might be in 2024.
