Macau recorded “over 22.72 million” visitor arrivals for the year to October-end, or circa 75,000 arrivals per day on average, said Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, director of the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO), in comments aired on Friday by the Chinese-language radio service of the city’s public broadcaster, TDM.
Macau’s visitor-arrival tally for the first ten months marked a “68 percent recovery” relative to the same period in the pre-pandemic trading year of 2019. The MGTO boss described the comeback as “satisfactory”, given the intervening disruption to tourism wrought by Covid-19.
The official statistics for October have yet to be published
From the provisional data Ms Senna Fernandes presented, the October full-month tally should be circa 2.79 million. Macau recorded just under 19.93 million visitor arrivals in the first nine months.
The first six days of October accounted for most of the autumn Golden Week holiday period in mainland China, which this year comprised both the Mid-Autumn Festival and the festivities around China’s National Day on October 1.
The Macau government has proposed spending up to MOP235 million (US$29.2 million) from its 2024 budget, for “attracting international visitors”. The plan is to be discussed by the Legislative Assembly, said Macau’s Secretary for Economy and Finance, Lei Wai Nong, in Wednesday comments to local media. The government’s particular target is people from Northeast and Southeast Asia, Mr Lei had noted. He didn’t detail how the money would be spent in order to appeal to them.
Since the easing of pandemic-related travel restrictions in January, the Macau government has run tourism promotion roadshows in mainland China and some target markets overseas. Marketing campaigns this year to encourage the return of mainlanders and to bring in overseas visitors, have included discount offers on flight tickets and on hotel stays.
Of Macau’s 19.93 million visitor arrivals in the first nine months, only 4.3 percent involved people from outside the “Greater China” markets, i.e., mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, according to data from Macau’s Statistics and Census Service.
