Macau had 165,500 visitor arrivals for the five-day holiday surrounding Labour Day on May 1, meaning there was a daily average of 33,100. But the actual tally for the final two days on May 4 and May 5 was fewer than 30,000 arrivals, according to figures from Macau’s Public Security Police.
The tally was not directly comparable with the 2019 holiday, which saw 531,000 visitor arrivals, as that year’s break was officially only four days for mainland China residents.
For 2021, China’s State Council designated the first five days of May as the Labour Day break. Mainland China currently has a quarantine-free travel bubble with Macau, and is presently the main source of Macau’s tourists.
May 4 saw Macau record 28,500 tourist arrivals, and May 5 brought 23,000 tourist arrivals.
Macau’s tourist arrival tally on May 1 – a Saturday – at the start of the Labour Day break, stood at more than 44,000. That was the best daily performance since the beginning of the pandemic.
But the daily aggregate subsequently dwindled to approximately 36,000 on May 2, and 34,000 on May 3, reported the Chinese-language radio service of the city’s public broadcaster TDM, earlier this week citing, the police’s statistics.
Brokerage JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd said in a Thursday memo, citing industry “channel checks” that it estimated Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) for the Labour Day break was “40 percent to 50 percent” of that achieved in the 2019 holiday period.
The 2019 holiday was officially only four days: May 1 to May 4 that year, as designated by China’s State Council. Nonetheless, May 4 that year was a Saturday, meaning some visitors might have extended their break to include the Sunday.
JP Morgan suggested the 2021 holiday’s mass GGR had recovered to “60 percent to 70 percent” of 2019 levels, and VIP rolling volumes to “20 percent to 25 percent” of 2019’s.
The estimated daily GGR for this year’s Labour Day break was “MOP400 million [US$50 million] to MOP500 million”, as compared to “over MOP1 billion a day” during the May Day break in 2019, suggested JP Morgan analysts DS Kim, Derek Choi and Livy Lyu in the Thursday memo.
“This is 50 percent to 80 percent higher than the recent run-rates – MOP270 million to MOP280 million a day in March/April – well above the 30 percent to 50 percent uptick that we typically see for May Golden Week, reflecting pent-up demand,” the JP Morgan analysts suggested.
They forecast Macau could generate more than MOP9.5 billion in GGR for the whole of May.
In 2019, Macau had more than 531,000 visitor arrivals for May 1 to May 3. A majority of those arrivals came from mainland China, according to information released from Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) at the time.
