A newly-published survey by payments brand VISA indicates Macau is in the top-10 places to visit for poll respondents from mainland China and Hong Kong. The two markets jointly provided the majority of Macau’s tourists in pre-pandemic trading years, thought the Macau government has a policy aspiration of bringing in more foreign visitors, including to the city’s casinos.
VISA’s “Consumer Payment Attitudes Study 4.0: Travel Consumption Insights – Macau” comes in the wake of relaxation of respectively China’s and Macau’s Covid-19 countermeasures, after three years of constraints on travel. A number of investment analysts had indicated Macau was likely to be an early post-pandemic stop for mainlanders due to ease of access and cultural ties.
Macau was ranked eighth most popular destination for mainland consumers polled in the VISA survey. They had Hong Kong at number three spot. Mainlanders’ most popular target was France. Macau was seventh most popular location for people from Hong Kong, with those respondents’ first choice being Japan, followed by mainland China.
Mainland and Hong Kong respondents opted for “food and dining” among the available survey choices as the top reason to visit Macau, with a 42 percent and 52 percent recognition level respectively. “Entertainment” was ranked fourth recognition-wise by mainland respondents, with 27 percent mentioning that. For those from Hong Kong, entertainment in Macau was ranked second, with 33 percent recognition.
“Holidaymakers from mainland China and Hong Kong show strong enthusiasm” to travel to Macau “for its unique cuisine and leisure activities for friends and family,” said Paulina Leong, head of client relationship management for VISA Hong Kong & Macau, as cited in a Tuesday press release about the survey.
The summary added that Macau was “well positioned to capitalise on the opportunities that have arisen due to the revival of… tourism” to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, a scheme by China’s central government to integrate the economies of the mainland’s Guangdong province and the two neighbouring special administrative regions.
The VISA survey summary further stated that “about an average of 70 percent of respondents across mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau have expressed interest in going for a multi-destination trip in the Greater Bay Area, with consumers from mainland China (77 percent) and Hong Kong (55 percent) stating interest in a trip duration of six days or more”.
The study polled 350 consumers in Macau, 700 consumers in Hong Kong, 1,000 consumers in Taiwan, and 2,000 consumers in mainland China. The survey sample comprised people aged 18 to 55 years, with a minimum monthly income of, respectively MOP5,000 (US$618), HKD5,000 (US$637), NTD5,000 (US$166) and CNY5,000 (US$733). Online interviews and face-to-face interviews were conducted during the period of September to October, 2022.
In early February, Macau welcomed back tour groups from the Chinese mainland, after an approximately three-year pause due to pandemic countermeasures, adding to the visitors from the mainland and Hong Kong already coming to Macau as independent travellers.
Macau had just over 451,000 visitor arrivals in the seven days that mainland China counted as the Chinese New Year holiday for 2023. The daily average over the holiday period was 64,435, with the single-busiest day reaching 90,391. That was the most since before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, in early 2020.
Macau casino gross gaming revenue rebounded in January, coinciding with the boom in tourism numbers, and remained “solid” in the first 12 days of February, according to investment analysts.
