The Macau Metro Monitor, August 14, 2012

SHELDON ADELSON'S LAS VEGAS SANDS CORP INVESTIGATED FOR BRIBERY Reuters

Nevada regulators are investigating whether LVS's dealing in mainland China violated bribery laws. The Nevada investigation of LVS adds to the existing investigations by the SEC and DOJ. 

The Nevada authorities recently obtained a detailed but preliminary report by an outside law firm for the Sands board's audit committee, which concluded that under previous management, the company's controls on executive actions were too weak. While the document, did not find conclusive evidence of corrupt payments it did question a series of deals on the mainland dating from before Jacobs' stint at the company.  

PACKAGE TOURS AND HOTEL OCCUPANCY RATE FOR JUNE 2012 DSEC

Visitor arrivals in package tours increased by 8.4% YoY to 662,109 in June 2012. Visitors from Mainland China (465,860) up 3.8%, with 167,266 coming from Guangdong Province; those from Taiwan, China (58,971); Hong Kong (28,649); the Republic of Korea (23,808); and Japan (22,225) increased by 66.2%, 23.4%, 22.1% and 25.8% respectively. In the first half year of 2012, visitors in package tours totalled 4,082,895, up by 25.9% year-on-year to account for 30.1% of the total visitor arrivals.

At the end of June, Macau had 66 hotels and 33 guest-houses with a total of 24,268 guest rooms, an increase of 2,592 rooms (+12.0%) YoY. 5-star hotels accounted for 61.1% of the total supply.  In June 2012, the average length of stay decreased by 0.16 night to 1.3 nights. Total Occupancy stood at 80.2%, down by 2.3%; hotel occupancy was 80.8%, with 4-star hotels leading at 86.7%. Number of guests increased by 12.2% year-on-year to 4,476,310 in the first half year of 2012 while occupancy stood at 81.6%, down by 0.4% YoY.