MGM China’s President and Chief Operating Officer Hubert Wang has revealed the company will double the head count of its international sales and marketing team as it looks to capitalize on recent market share gains in Macau.
His comments were made during the 2Q23 earnings call of parent company MGM Resorts on Thursday morning (Asia time), during which MGM Resorts CEO and President Bill Hornbuckle also highlighted the efforts of the marketing team following the demise of the Macau junket industry.
“We are uniquely positioned in the way we’ve historically shaped for decades our marketing organization around knowing our own customers and delivering them to our properties,” Hornbuckle said after MGM China exceeded its 2Q19 revenue and EBITDAR levels in the June 2023 quarter.
“Obviously now with the demise of junkets we’ve seen that network go to work and we are expanding on that network. We’ve opened a couple more offices, so that’s been meaningful and helpful.”
Providing more color on the company’s marketing efforts, Wang said MGM China was now looking at further sales team expansion which he described as being “very important for our customer acquisition.
“We are [also] going to leverage the network that MGM Resorts has internationally to push the overseas market,” he explained. “I think we have already made a lot of progress and we are going to open more offices and double our headcount – sales and marketing people – in these areas.”
Enhancing international visitation was one of the key tenants of the Macau’s government’s re-tendering process in 2022, which saw Macau’s six existing concessionaires all handed new 10-year gaming concessions. The new concessions have, however, seen the six commit to investing a combined MOP$118.8 billion (US$14.9 billion) into Macau during those 10 years, of which MOP$108.7 billion (US$13.6 billion) is for developing foreign source markets and non-gaming projects.
Wang said MGM China’s capital allocation was now getting underway.
“Capital projects and enhancement remain very important elements to improve the customer experience, particularly on the premium mass side, so at MGM Macau for example, we are going to do villa renovations in the coming months and quarters and there are also a lot of non-gaming programs and products that we are going to introduce or renovate under our re-tendering concession commitment. There are a lot of things we are doing and focusing on to defend our market share.”
The company noted that it has currently deployed around 150 of the 198 new gaming tables it was awarded by the Macau government under its new concession, which has helped MGM China gain momentum throughout Q2 and into July.
“To give you some color, our July results are very strong, very robust, and showed continued improvement on a lot of KPIs versus the second quarter,” Wang said.
“Whether it is daily GGR, mass GGR recovery rate of even EBITDA recovery rate, we are looking at higher numbers than the second quarter so I’m very optimistic on the balance of the year in terms of recovery.”
