Citing sources among Macau's game player organizers, Credit Suisse AG said premium public "player quality" during the October Golden Week period is likely to be slightly lower than last year.

"I've checked a few things with the premium mass host about player quality. They generally mention that the quality of players (measured by spending per player versus hotel room quality) is slightly lower than last year," analysts Kenneth Fong and Isis Wong said in a note on Friday.

The casino industry in Macau, which has been battered for 18 months by a combination of China's anti-graft crackdown and its underlying weakening of the Chinese economy, is looking forward to one of the most important times in the Chinese holiday calendar to find signs of stabilization or improvement.

Mr. Fong and Ms. Wong said the festive season would be an important indicator of health for the VIP gambling sector, which has been hit harder than popular market play due to the economic downturn. Macau junket investor Neptune Group said in a filing on Friday that participation may have to be reconsidered if the Macau VIP market does not improve within a few years.

Louis Chew, chairman and founder of Macau casino operator Galaxy Entertainment Group, one of the most active local game companies in the VIP segment, said on Friday that he believes Macau games have been "stabilized."

Credit Suisse recently announced that it was an internal fraud victim of a former employee, referring to Macau junket operator Dore Entertainment Inc., which operates VIP facilities at the Win Macau Casino Hotel. "The Junket Business (VIP) is still a wildcard, especially after the Junket Door incident, where Junket liquidity has been strengthened since then. Junket keeps more cash in cages for potential repayments, and regulators' intentions to tighten junket regulations could hurt depositors' risk appetite in the junket business. While the overall impact of the incident can hardly be assessed at this time, we see Golden Week as a key health check for the junket system."

In a note, the Credit Suisse team added. "Overall, we are more optimistic about the performance of Golden Week's [bulk] segment. Looking at the number of participants, strong hotel reservations (better than Labor Day holidays) will be a good leading indicator."

hotel demand

A recent survey of 21 Macau hotels found that pre-booking for the Golden Week holiday, which runs from Oct. 1-7, was fully booked for the entire period, while 10 were fully booked for more than five days of the week. The survey was conducted by the Hong Kong Economic Journal and reported on September 21.

According to the survey, the average price of a room was slightly lower than the same period last year.

According to data from the Macau Hotel Association, the average cost of a Macau hotel room was $1,512 ($189) in the eight months to August. This is a 5.4% decrease from the previous year.

The average occupancy rate for Macau hotels in the first eight months of 2015 was 83.6%, down 7.5 percentage points from 91.1% a year earlier.

The Macau Hoteliers and Innocents Association, another hotel-industry organization that mainly represents hotels without casinos, believes it will be able to achieve up to 90% occupancy during the October Golden Week, but average room rates are lower than a year ago. 슬롯머신

"We believe that the city's 3-5 star hotels will see an 80-90% occupancy rate from Oct. 1-6, when the average room rate offered during the period fell by 10% annually," said Chanchik Kit, president of the association, in the Macau newspaper Business Daily.