Starting Sept. 1, Chinese citizens may no longer be permitted to visit Macau through trips to Hong Kong using the same visa, according to a recent report.

Deutsche Bank analyst Karen Tang, citing local press called Ming Pao, included the information in a recent report.

If implemented, this new restriction would close a previous loophole which allowed Chinese citizens to visit Macau more than once a month if they traveled through Hong Kong, according to Deutsche Bank gaming analyst Bill Lerner, who cited the news in a note to investors Tuesday.

The Chinese government already has introduced two measures to slow growth of Chinese visitors to Macau.

From June 1, Guangdong province started tightening visa applications from twice a month to once a month. From July 1, the province further tightened the rule to once every two months.

Last year, Guangdong also implemented a temporary visa policy, restricting travel from twice to once a month. The restrictions had a one-month impact on Chinese visitor growth, with growth from Mainland Chinese visitors falling to 13 percent in June 2007 from a year-to-date 2007 trend of 19 percent. Growth quickly rebounded to from 24 to 33 percent higher from July through December.

As for gaming revenue, after last year's restriction, from June to December 2007 gaming revenue was up 46 percent, just slightly below January through May, which was up 53 percent.

“If implemented, this measure will be the third within a four-month period,” Lerner said in the investor note. “We see this as the strong signal by the government to seriously control supernormal growth in the Macau gaming industry [in which revenue jumped plus 54 percent year over year in the first half of 2008].”

But Lerner noted that “since the initial stage of restrictions started in June, there seems to have been little impact on Macau’s gaming revenue growth, as least for the first month.” June’s gaming revenue was up 70 percent year over year.