Macau expects 25,000 visitors per day during October Golden Week

Macau authorities hope the October Golden Week will see an improvement for the tourism and gaming sectors.

Macau.- According to the Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO), the city could receive 25,000 visitors per day during the October Golden Week.

This year, the October Golden Week will be held during the first seven days of October. Last year, the number of visitors entering the city surpassed 20,000 a day on average.

Macao Government Tourism Office director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes said: “The October Golden Week is a very important period as everyone is hoping to achieve a better business performance.”

Macau’s tourism sector has started to rebound after the drop due to local Covid-19 cases in the first week of August.

Macau’s Public Security Police said the number of arrivals started to increase after Macau carried out mass testing for Covid-19, in which 716,251 people were tested, all of them returning negative results.

The recovery also follows the announcement of an extension for the validity of negative Covid-19 tests for visitors from Guangdong province to 48 hours. The measure covers direct inbound and outbound land trips.

In July, Macau’s Public Security Police reported that 789,407 visitors came to Macau, a growth of 49.36 per cent month-on-month. The figure also represented a 10-fold increase when compared to the same month of 2020, when Macau was under Covid-19 countermeasures and lockdowns. However, in July 2019, the city welcomed 3.5m visitors.

Mainland China continues to be the only country to have a largely quarantine-free travel bubble with Macau. 

Macau’s GGR for the first fifteen days of August was MOP1.55bn (US$193m). The month-to-date average daily rate is MOP103m (US$13m), down 87 per cent when compared to August 2019 levels and down 62 per cent compared to July’s figures.

May remains the month with the highest GGR of the year to date, mainly thanks to the Labour Day break, when Macau’s Public Security Police reported that 165,500 tourists came to Macau.

Macau could receive between 7 and 8 million visitors this year

In June, the MGTO predicted the city could receive between 7 and 8 million visitors this year. That compares to previous forecasts of between 6 and 10 million arrivals.

Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes changed her predictions after a rise in Covid-19 cases in the province of Guangdong in June.