Macau visitor arrivals down 36.6% in June

Macau registered 381,000 visitor arrivals in June, down 36.6 per cent month-on-month and down 28 per cent from 2021.

Macau.- The Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) has reported that 381,000 tourists arrived in Macau in June. The figure was down 36.6 per cent month-on-month and down 28 per cent year-on-year.

The figure is a long way from what was expected at the beginning of the month, when Macau Government Tourism Office director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes said the number of tourists could be between 30,000 and 40,000 per day.

The numbers were severely impacted by the latest outbreak of Covid-19 cases in Macau, which started on June 19. Since then, Macau has reported 1,783 confirmed Covid-19 cases (as of midnight on Tuesday). Authorities have introduced a series of countermeasures including the temporary closure of casino venues and non-essential businesses.

The DSEC also reported that for the first half of this year, the city received fewer than 3.5 million visitors. The figure was down 11.8 per cent year-on-year. More than 90 per cent of the visitors came from mainland China while nearly 8.6 per cent came from Hong Kong. 

Analysts at JP Morgan Securities have estimated that Macau casino operators will end the year with approximately US$800m in EBITDA losses. They expect 2023 GGR could rebound to 40 per cent of pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, Macau reported full-year gross gambling revenue of MOP292.4bn (US$36.1bn).