The tally of visitor arrivals to Macau in June declined by 99.3 percent year-on-year to 22,556, according to data from the city’s Statistics and Census Service released on Monday. The dip coincides with the ongoing Covid-19 crisis and a raft of travel restrictions across the region and the world as a whole.
Macau’s June tally meant an average of just under 752 visitors per day. The monthly aggregate nonetheless marked a 40-percent increase on the May visitor tally, when the daily average was about 520 arrivals.
In June, the tally of overnight visitors and same-day visitors declined in both cases by over 99 percent from a year earlier, to 9,351 and 13,205 respectively.
In terms of source markets, the total of mainland Chinese visitors declined by 99.0 percent year-on-year in June, to 21,067, with the number of those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) down almost 100 percent, to only 71. A number of investment analysts has suggested a resumption of the IVS system is likely to be a key factor in Macau casino market recovery.
In June, the tally of visitors from Hong Kong, normally the second-largest feeder market for Macau tourism, fell by 99.8 percent from the prior-year period, to 1,142, said the statistics bureau. Arrivals from Taiwan fell by 99.7 percent year-on-year to only 326 during the same month.
During June, as many as 22,443 of Macau’s inbound visitors entered the city via inland checkpoints, according to the statistics bureau. There were only 113 visitors arriving by air that month.
The normal scheduled ferry services connecting the city to Hong Kong and mainland China remained suspended during June.
In the first six months of 2020, visitor arrivals to Macau totalled nearly 3.27 million, down 83.9 percent year-on-year. Of that visitor tally, an over 80-percent year-on-year decline was recorded for visitors from the city’s major source markets of mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, respectively.
