Macau's 17 casinos operating round-the-clock were nearly full to brim all the time during the Lunar New Year holiday, which witnessed the first travel spree to Macau in a year.
Its casinos generated a gross revenue of approximately 500 million patacas (US$62.5 million) in the first five days of the new year vacation, which started on February 9 and ended yesterday in China's mainland.
Macau's tourism authorities forecast before the holiday that over 130,000 visitors from the Chinese mainland would flood into the Macau Special Administrative Region under the mainland's facilitated individual travel scheme during the week-long new year vacation.
Macau's customs recorded nearly 1.6 million border entries and exits during the first five days of the holiday.
Two new casino halls were opened for business in Macau on Monday aimed at getting the limelight during the new year travel spree.
One of the two, the Fortuna Casino became the 15th casino owned by tycoon Stanley Ho's gaming empire. The casino seated next to Ho's flagship Hotel Lisboa offers 35 gaming tables.
On the same day, Macau's first Las Vegas-invested casino Sands Macao added the "Pearl Room," a new themed luxury gaming room, hosting 40 gaming tables in addition to 180 slot machines.
The present number of gaming tables in Macau's casinos of close to 1,500 nearly tripled that in 2003 after Ho's 40-year-odd monopoly was virtually broken in 2004.