Macau saw a rise of 6.3 percent in visitors to the enclave in the first four months of 2012. 9.3 million people visited China’s casino destination from January to April with the majority, 5.6 million, coming from the Mainland. The figures, from the Statistics and Census Bureau, also showed that arrivals increased by a modest 1.9 percent to 2.3 million compared with the previous year. There were big rises in the amount of people arriving from Philippines (up 20 percent) and Japan (up 24 percent) also. It comes after the tourism chiefs got so excited by it all they said the enclave will see 10 percent more arrivals than last year. It would mean 28 million visitors and put more strain on the enclave’s workforce.
Analysts are still confident about Macau’s casino sector despite a number of drops in the share price over the past week. Nomura analysts Charlene Liu and Michael Shen are particularly buoyant, according to Macau Business, and posted an investors note stating: “Casino stocks remain attractive in the mid- to long-term”. The two stocks they highlight are Wynn Macau and SJM Holdings with the others not holding as much luster for the analysts.
Shuffle Master has been at the centre of a row at this year’s G2E Asia conference after they were forced to cover up some of their products. Media in Macau report the U.S. firm got into a row with Macau based LT Game over the intellectual property rights of an electronic multi-game casino product. Shuffle Master got so worried they covered up their products and obtained a court order to show it was permitted to show the product in question. This dispute will likely roll on given they’ve had a number of disagreements over the same patent in the past.
