The tally of visitor arrivals from all source markets to Macau during the Chinese mainland’s lunar new year festivities passed the 1 million mark by the end of Thursday, the sixth day of China’s eight-day holiday marking the Year of the Dragon.
Thursday’s aggregate was 176,942, pushing the tally for the first six days to nearly 1.08 million. The update was given by Macau’s Public Security Police, the agency responsible for monitoring the region’s immigration checkpoints.
The volume for the first six days this time was 3.7 percent higher than the just under 1.04 million that arrived in the first six days of the same break in the pre-pandemic trading year of 2019, when the holiday lasted seven days and started on February 4, 2019. That is according to historical data from the city’s Statistics and Census Service.
Judged year-on-year, the six-day tally this time was up 178.1 percent compared to the 386,753 arrivals from all markets for the first six days of Chinese New Year (CNY) celebrations in 2023.
Last time, the holiday started on January 21, 2023, only shortly after Covid-19 travel restrictions had been dropped for the mainland, Macau and Hong Kong. The entire 2023 holiday was seven days, not eight days.
Brokerage Morgan Stanley Asia Ltd had said in a Wednesday note that Macau’s Chinese New Year visitor volume this time was “stronger than 2019” and than 2023’s so-called Autumn Golden Week, encompassing China’s National Day Holiday on October 1.
Analysts Praveen Choudhary and Gareth Leung stated: “Chinese visitations are tracking well above the 2019 and October Golden Week 2023 levels with meaningful improvement in air arrivals. This bodes well for GGR [gross gaming revenue] expectations.”
Macau International Airport Co Ltd (CAM), the operator of the city’s air hub, said in a Thursday press release that for the first five days of this year’s holiday – i.e., February 10 to 14 inclusive – it had welcomed more than 110,000 passengers and handled more than 800 flight movements. It stated both figures represented a twofold increase compared to Chinese New Year last time.
Macau’s Public Security Police did not supply a breakdown on visitors’ respective place of origin relative to the six days of data gathered so far for this year’s break. But the majority of tourists entered Macau via border checkpoints solely serving people arriving from, or departing to, mainland China.
Provisional figures from the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) – for the first five days of the holiday period – showed that the number of mainland China tourists stood at 684,235, accounting for 76.1 percent of the circa 899,036 total recorded up to the end of Wednesday.
The daily average of such visitors stood at 136,847, up 263.0 percent from the comparable period in 2023.
In the first five days of the holiday break, the number of arrivals from Hong Kong reached 165,491, making up for 18.4 percent of all arrivals in that period, according to MGTO. The daily average from the neighbouring city reached 33,098, a 40.6-percent increase from the prior-year period.
