A senior Macau tourism official said on Friday that daily visitor numbers to the city in August could be “even better” than the 89,000 average per day achieved in July as assessed from preliminary data, though the recovery of volume from markets beyond China is still slow.
Cheng Wai Tong, deputy director at Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO), also stated that provisional figures for the first three days of August indicated daily visitor tallies of “over 93,000”.
He was speaking on the sidelines of a public event on Friday.
The official also made some remarks about the composition of the Macau visitor market, noting it was “evident” that the recovery of the mainland China and Hong Kong visitor markets was more pronounced than that for international tourists.
Mr Cheng said the pace of the pickup for arrivals from international markets was still slow, and the city’s government would continue to make promotional efforts for that segment.
The official data for July visitors will only be available later this month.
The government has a policy of encouraging more overseas visitors to Macau even relative to the volume prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. A condition of the 10-year gaming concessions that started in January, is that the six gaming operators help the government to achieve that.
A number of investment analysts has said that Macau visitor volume is not necessarily a proxy for, or predictor of, the city’s casino gross gaming revenue, as traditionally a significant portion of such revenue has been generated from high-stakes players, rather than mass-market patrons.
According to data collated from Macau’s Statistics and Census Service, in July 2019, the daily average visitor volume had been 113,878, based on just over 3.53 million arrivals.
