Our faculty member - Prof. W.M. To and Prof. W.M. Lim of Sunway University (former Professor of Swinburne University of Technology) published an article entitled “The economic impact of a global pandemic on the tourism economy: The case of COVID-19 and Macao’s destination-and gambling-dependent economy” in Current Issues in Tourism in 2022 (Volume 25, Issue No. 8)* https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2021.1910218 . According to Scopus’ latest statistics, this article has been cited 33 times (top 1% in terms of citations in the field) and has a weighted citation impact of 20.42 i.e. more than 20 times higher than the average or expected number of citations received by other similar publications. 

What is it about?

This study delineates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gambling industry using Macao, the world’s largest destination-dependent gambling hub, as a case in 2020.

What are the key findings?

We estimated the unprecedented decline in Macao’s gaming revenue in 2020 due to COVID-19 using seasonal ARIMA model. Additionally, our findings confirm that Macao is a gambling-dependent economy as the decline in gambling revenue coincides with the decline in economic indicators such as GDP, median salary, and unemployment rate. This article concludes with pragmatic suggestions (e.g. reimagine strategies, seek alternatives) to help gambling hubs that are destination-dependent to navigate in and recover from crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

*Current Issues in Tourism is a leading tourism journal and ranked as an “A” journal in the Australian ABDC list. Its 2021 Impact Factor is 7.578 and the latest CiteScore is 10.6.