More non-gamblers visited Macau during Golden Week

Derek Chen and family spent their Golden Week holiday in the world’s biggest gambling center – and didn’t place a single bet.
Chen and his wife, from Guangdong province, didn’t go near a gaming table during their four-day vacation in Macau last week. Instead, they entertained their 3-year-old son at the fun zone in Melco Crown’s Studio City, took in a magic show and rode on the resort’s Ferris wheel.
“I was surprised when my friends suggested I take my son here to Macau,” said Chen, 30, whose past trips to the city tended to be one-night gambling excursions with his friends. “Macau is different now. It’s become a place where we can stay for a few days, find good restaurants and the kid can enjoy a magic show.”
Macau’s about-face appeal to families instead of its traditional base of high-stakes gamblers is showing signs of paying off. The number of visitors from China rose 6.9 percent to 970,000 during the National Day holiday from October 1 to 7 known as Golden Week. That’s the most tourists from the country in at least 10 years.
Mainland vacationers came to the former Portuguese enclave even as China’s slowing economy leaves many consumers cash-strapped and as the yuan weakens against the dollar. Expansion in the world’s second-largest economy may have slowed to 6.6 percent in the third quarter, and the yuan fell the most in four months Monday.
“With the roll out of non-casino attractions, more non-gamblers will be attracted to these leisure places,” said  Catherine Lim, a retail analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. “The ‘one stop and you get it all for your family’ concept definitely works for Chinese. The families like to visit shopping malls where there are restaurants and playgrounds for their children.”
The increase in Golden Week visitors is slower than the growth two years ago, when Macau’s casino industry came off a record year in gaming revenue. Yet it helps support the city’s efforts to reinvent itself as it comes under pressure from China’s central government to scale back from gambling.
China President Xi Jinping ordered Macau to diversify its economy when he first visited in December 2014, and Premier Li Keqiang, who was in town this week, reiterated Beijing’s push for those efforts and introduced a series of policies aimed at supporting the changes.
Still, Macau faces intensifying challenges from travel destinations in Asia and further afield, as countries court China’s gamblers as well as its shoppers. South Korea and the Philippines have been opening new casinos targeting Chinese high-stakes players, while Singapore came up with its own version of Golden Week that offers retail discounts and free limousine rides.
The number of Chinese who traveled during the National Day holiday rose 13 percent from a year ago to 593 million visitors, the China National Tourism Administration said on its website. Of those, agency-guided tourists leaving the country rose 12 percent to 1.4 million.
Their top destinations included South Korea, Japan, Russia and Thailand.
“It remains to be seen whether Macau’s visitor growth rate can be sustained,” Bloomberg Intelligence’s Lim said. “The post-Golden Week performance could be weak and the outbound travel trend has introduced more competition to Macau.” MDT/Bloomberg