Macau recorded 69,279 visitor arrivals on the sixth day of the Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday period, showed official data. The city welcomed about 384,600 visitors in the first six days of the week-long holiday, according to preliminary figures from the city’s Public Security Police.
China’s State Council has designated the holiday period for mainland residents as January 21, a Saturday, to January 27, a Friday, inclusive. The festive break in Hong Kong – another important source market for Macau’s tourists – was designated as running from January 23 to January 25.
On Tuesday (January 24) Macau recorded 90,391 arrivals, its highest daily total since early 2020, the time of the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the figures released by the authorities.
The average number of visitor arrivals in the first six days of this year’s festive period stood just above 64,000 a day, showed the preliminary figures.
The average daily volume of visitors to Macau during the previous lunar new year period, in early February 2022, was 16,242. The tally for the full seven days of the Chinese New Year break in 2022 stood at 113,699, according to Macau government data.
In pre-pandemic times, the Chinese New Year festival has been a period of high demand for Macau’s casino and tourism industries. In 2019 Macau had seen over 1.2 million visitor arrivals for that seven-day holiday period, according to official data.
Brokerage JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd said in a Wednesday note that visitor arrival tallies alone, had not “accurately” indicated the level of casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) in the past, adding that “the vast majority of lunar new year gaming volumes” had occurred on days four to six of the holiday period in previous times.
As a consequence, “our checks indicate a 50 percent-plus recovery in mass GGR,” compared to the equivalent holiday period in 2019, is “certainly doable”, wrote analyst DS Kim.
