I thought we would dominate completely in Singapore. We’re seeing Singapore is doing very well. We’ve equalled our 2019 rolling volumes. But what surprised me to the upside is the international demand for Macao, and rolling volume in Macao has been very pleasant, much more than I thought, that we could be rolling in that market far in excess of $20 billion, $25 billion annually, this keeps going.So, there has been a pleasant surprise — has not hurt us in Singapore if you look at the numbers, but of course, there’s only so much money out there, so it might have some impact. Singapore, as you see, had record numbers on the — the slot numbers are astounding, to be at 900-plus per unit. I’ve never seen that in any market I’ve worked in, on especially the scale of machines, the market plus our non-rolling win.
To exceed 6 million a day, it’s pretty extraordinary. And that’s what the impediments and the big headwinds of our rooms being down, our casino being torn up and there is yet to be a recovery of the Chinese consumer into Singapore at the level I think it will get to.So, the pleasant surprise is, Macao is attracting a very strong international Asian high-end customer and yet we’re doing fine in Singapore. We may be sharing a very large rolling business between Singapore and Macao for long time to come. I had that wrong pleasantly. I do think the slot business in Singapore and the non-rolling is just the beginning of a trend, a very strong trend. Once we get these rooms back and the casino and — who knows where it goes. If we make $2.5 billion, $3 billion of those segments in the years to come, maybe.
But clearly, we’re very happy with the results.For Singapore to do this well this early [in the day] (ph) without a full blown China recovery, it’s pretty impressive. I think, we can believe we can make $500 million a quarter in the near future when things get back to a stronger place. So, we’re very pleased in both markets for different reasons.Carlo Santarelli Great. That’s helpful. And then, just as a follow-up. I guess, my question is more along the lines of, are you surprised by — when you are looking at deck, obviously, your premium mass business looks like it’s recovering or I should say, your base mass business is recovering relative to the first quarter of ’19, very similarly to the premium mass business. And given where visitation is today relative to ’19, is that dynamic surprising to you guys at all?Rob Goldstein It is to me.
I think if we go Page 14 of our deck to see the visitation [being like] (ph) 40% and yet see a recovery where it’s at, it’s very encouraging for future. The trajectory of Macao feels very good to us. And as Joe alluded to, the growth between January, February, March, it looks very [indiscernible] not be encouraged when you see. We made $400 million roughly without visitation really coming back very much, without hotel rooms being fully occupied, without a lot of impediments, a lot of headwinds and yet here we are. So, yeah, it’s very encouraging for us and to the market. And of course, we’re the biggest beneficiary of the recovery of base mass since we — that’s our dominant position.But I want also allude to the fact that we believe with our new Londoner and Four Seasons suite and physical product, we’re going to compete very favorably, not just the base mass, not just retail, we’re going for the very top-end of the market as well to dominate that, and we believe we can do it in both the rolling and non-rolling segments.
We have both scale in terms of suite product, but also great aesthetic. When you see what we’ve done, we were there, and you see the new Londoner, you see the new Four Seasons, I promise you, you will be overwhelmed with the product of quality. What that team has done is exceptional work.So, for us, we see no segment in Macao to our competitors. We want to be first in every category. I believe it’s possible with our new products.Carlo Santarelli Great, thanks very much.Grant Chum Rob, maybe I can just add something on the…Rob Goldstein Yes, please, jump in, Grant.Grant Chum Sorry. Okay. Just to add something to Rob’s comment on the premium mass versus mass off the question, yes, it looks like from the deck that we recovered at a similar rate on the premium mass and mass win versus first quarter of 2019.
But overall, in terms of volumes and headcount, it was definitely a premium mass led recovery and the quality of customer has been increasing and the spend per head. The win comparison with 2019 is more hold related issue on the premium mass segment for both 2019 and 2023. But overall, premium mass gaming volume, gaming drop and headcount recovery is faster than base mass.But I think to Rob’s points, we’ve been essentially out competing in the premium segments in both VIP and premium mass as you can see from the market share in the first quarter. Our non-rolling drop recovered to two-thirds of the first quarter of 2019 level. That’s in line with the overall market recovery in mass, despite a much bigger dependence on base mass. So, as the base mass, which has been lagging in the recovery, starts to ramp up, especially as more hotel rooms come online for city — for the whole city and for our portfolio, and also that visitations pickup and transportation and logistics improve, we should obviously be the biggest beneficiary of that base mass recovery.And some of that you can already see in the way we’ve outperformed in a slot electronic gaming market.
Slot handle recovering to over 73% of 2019. And that has a lot more exposure. I mean, Hong Kong base mass is a much bigger part of slot and tables, and obviously, Hong Kong base mass has recovered faster as you can see from the visitations where Hong Kong visitations are already 75% of where they were in 2019, and you can see that outperformance in electronic gaming has been strong, both in absolute terms and relative to the market.Carlo Santarelli Certainly. Thank you very much for the additional context. I appreciate it.Rob Goldstein Thanks, Carlo. Appreciate it.Operator Thank you. And the next question is coming from Robin Farley from UBS. Robin, your line is live.Robin Farley Great, thank you. Grant, following on your comments about the strength of the recovery being that by the premium mass side, I’m curious if you’re seeing any impact at all from visa policy that is sometimes turning down kind of frequent visitors or multiple visits in a period.
Sounds like it’s not impacting the recovery in your view. But I’m just curious if you’re seeing any impacts from that.Rob Goldstein Grant?Grant Chum Rob, shall I take that?Rob Goldstein Please, yes.Grant Chum Yeah, Robin, I think for — if you look at the visitation, overall, we are seeing a much faster recovery from Guangdong than from the non-Guangdong provinces. I think that’s for obvious reasons, the proximity, the ease with which the visitors from the neighboring province can get to Macao. From my point of view, I think the biggest impediment to a higher rate of recovery in non-Guangdong visitation is actually the amount of hotel room inventory that was unavailable in the first quarter. I mean, we’re the biggest repository of hotel rooms and we’re with offline by 36%.
And for the city as a whole, obviously, the percentage of out of rooms availability was also very significant.So, I think people have kind of high propensity to think about coming to Macao. I think the hotel room inventory issue has been a big impediment. But that’s obviously easing dramatically as we get into the second quarter. And then, transportation is still only a fraction of what it was, especially in routes like from Hong Kong to Macao. Our ferries are only 20% of where they were in 2019 during the first quarter. And yeah, obviously, the visitation from Hong Kong has been so strong.So, I think overall, the visitation recovery is progressing very well, but you’ve got to bear in mind a couple of those pain points that are both, I think, I would say, easing quite significantly, and that’s the hotel room inventory and the transportation.Robin Farley Great, and that’s helpful.
Thanks. And then, just as my follow-up, if I could. Understanding, it’s going to take a couple of quarters for all your hotel rooms to be up and running, at that point, when you think about the run rate where you are for operating expense, how would you compare that to 2019? Is there any kind of permanent reduction in some way in operating expense? Or in fact is — does the labor issue, mean that costs are going to be higher when you’re kind of fully ramped up? Thanks.Rob Goldstein Take it, Grant.Grant Chum Yeah. I think clearly we — as we add headcount to man, to operate all of our inventory on the hospitality side, our payroll cost will start to go up. But obviously, we expect the revenue to be rebounding a lot more. So, I think this is just the ordinary course of ramping up the capacity.
We achieved multiple rounds of cost savings over the years. After the 2014 downturn, we achieved some sustainable savings from that round. We made some additional structural cost savings on our expenses during the pandemic, and we hope to hold on to some of those savings.But, in terms of the labor portion, absolutely we have to invest in the manpower to get our assets back up to full operating capacity and, obviously, the cost will grow in line with that. But clearly, we want to be operating 12,000 rooms, not 7,700. So, this is something we’re trying to do as quickly as we can.Robin Farley Great, thanks very much.Operator Thank you. The next question is coming from Shaun Kelley from Bank of America. Shaun. your line is live.Shaun Kelley Hi, great.
Thanks. Just, maybe to start, if we could go back to a couple of your comments, Rob, on that base mass versus some of the premium mass mix and the surprise there. I mean, is — a healthy way to think about the mix that we’re seeing in the market today, just kind of low double digit increase in spend per visit, is that — if I look at the 62% base mass versus, let’s call it, 48% overall visitation growth, is that reflective of market conditions, or is there some subtext or some difference that we should be thinking about, or did that change throughout the quarter at all? Just trying to kind of get a sense of what’s pent-up demand and how much of this is just getting the bodies back into the property.Rob Goldstein I think, one thing we would be careful of, we’re — again, we’re in early innings here.
