139k visitors to Macau on Sat, post-pandemic record: govt

Aug 15, 2023 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck  

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On Saturday, Macau welcomed 139,000 visitors, the highest daily tally since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The information was given by Cheng Wai Tong, deputy director at Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO), in comments broadcast on Monday on the Chinese-language radio service of public broadcaster TDM.

Saturday’s tally was about 56 percent higher than the 89,000-per-day average seen in July.

The 139,000 arrivals represented the “highest daily” aggregate in three-and-a-half years, said the official.

So far in August, the daily average number of visitor arrivals had already exceeded 100,000, Mr Cheng also stated.

A number of investment analysts has commented previously that the volume of Macau visitors is not always a proxy for Macau casino gross gaming revenue (GGR), due to the local industry’s traditional reliance on high-stakes gambling by a relatively narrow base of players.

Nonetheless a Monday note from JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd estimated that market-wide Macau GGR reached MOP7.20 billion (US$894.1 million) in the first 13 days of August, or a daily run-rate of MOP553 million.

China’s State Council has designated September 29 to October 6 inclusive as the holiday period encompassing the lunar-calendar based Mid-Autumn Festival falling on September 29 this year, and China’s National Day on October 1. Traditionally those holiday seasons are times of peak demand for Macau’s casinos and general tourism facilities.

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