Macau had on average “over 100,000” visitor arrivals daily in the first half of August, exceeding government expectations, said Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, director of the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO), in remarks to local media on Wednesday.
The tourism office had expected Macau to receive “circa 80,000” visitors daily in August, Ms Senna Fernandes had mentioned to reporters in early July.
Recently – as the summer-holiday season draws to a close – the average per-day tally has been above “90,000” stated the tourism boss on the sidelines of a Wednesday event. For September – a month when most schools in China and surrounding places restart classes – she expected Macau’s daily arrivals to be at a “lower” level.
July saw nearly 2.76 million visitor arrivals, a daily average of 89,000, according to the city’s Statistics and Census Service. That meant July had recovered to about 78 percent of July 2019 levels, i.e., in the immediate trading year before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As in pre-Covid times, the July inbound market was dominated by travellers from mainland China. That market’s 1.9 million visitor arrivals equalled approximately 74 percent of the volume of mainland China visitors welcomed in the same month of 2019.
July 2023 visitors from the ‘international’ markets – outside the Greater China region – only tallied 129,756 for the full month of July, or a daily average of 4,186 visitor arrivals, according to the census service data.
For the first 17 days of August, the daily average of international visitors “increased by 5 percent” sequentially from July, the tourism office said separately in a Wednesday press release.
Macau has a public policy aspiration to increase the proportion of tourists – including gambling tourists – it draws in from overseas. MGTO has mentioned recently offering discounts to overseas consumers on the cost of flying to Macau’s regionally-focused airport.
