Visitor arrivals to Macau on the fifth day of the autumn Golden Week holiday period were up 14.7 percent day-on-day to 21,500, but still down 86.7 percent from the prior-year period. The latest data put the number of visitor arrivals to the city at 98,592 between October 1 and October 5 (Monday), down 87.2 percent from the same period in 2019.
The preliminary figures from the city’s Public Security Police were compiled by the Macao Government Tourism Office.
The number of mainland visitor arrivals on October 5 was 19,815, up 12.6 percent sequentially, but down 84.5 percent from a year earlier. That pushed the aggregate tally of mainland Chinese tourists in the first five days of the holiday period to 92,499, down 85.8 percent from the prior-year period.
October Golden Week this year incorporates the lunar-calendar based Mid-autumn Festival, as well as China’s October 1 National Day. China’s State Council has designated October 1 to October 8, inclusive, as the holiday period.
The 2020 autumn Golden Week has been seen by a number of investment analysts as a key moment for gauging the likely strength of any comeback this year in casino gross gaming revenue for the Macau market, after the initial disruption wrought by Covid-19.
The number of visitor arrivals in the early days of the holiday period were “disappointing,” said a Monday note from analyst David Bain, of Roth Capital Partners LLC.
“We believe days one through four of October visitation are disappointing, even amongst lowered forecasts,” wrote Mr Bain. “October consensus GGR [gross gaming revenue] expectations for -71 percent are likely to [be] moderated – again,” he added.
