The Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) has called for travel agencies to cancel tour group bookings while the clean-up in the wake of Typhoon Mangkhut continues.
The request mirrors a similar halt to tour group operations for one week following Typhoon Hato last August, when a number of hotels found themselves without power or water. Macau was better prepared this time around but that hasn’t stopped the MGTO from requesting another stoppage to tour group arrivals in order “to smoothen city restoration.”
“The Macao Government Tourism Office calls for all travel agencies to make a thorough assessment regarding the lodging, dining and traffic conditions after the typhoon and not to receive any tour groups except for necessary reasons, so that visitors’ safety can be safeguarded and all the restoration work for the city in the aftermath will not be affected,” it said.
The number of people visiting Macau on package tours has been on the rise in recent times, including a 13.8% year-on-year increase in the first six months of 2018 to 4,274,000.
However, analysts are predicting that the closure of casinos for 29 hours at the height of Typhoon Mangkhut last weekend and ongoing transport disruptions will negatively impact the Macau gaming industry’s bottom line.
Bernstein’s Vitaly Umansky, Zhen Gong and Kelsy Zhu have revised their September estimates from a year-on-year increase of between 8% and 11% to between flat and +3%, representing a sequential decline of 17% to 20% on August’s MOP$26.6 billion in gross gaming revenue.
