The tally of visitor arrivals to Macau over the weekend, marking the beginning of the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday break in mainland China, reached 217,816, according to data from Macau’s Public Security Police.
China’s State Council has designated the holiday period for mainland residents as September 15 to 17 inclusive.
Saturday, the day before the holiday break officially started, saw a total of 92,502 visitor arrivals to Macau, showed the preliminary data. On Sunday, tourist arrivals totalled 125,314, according to the figures published by the Macau authorities.
The police data do not include any breakdown of the source markets for the inbound visitors.
But they show that the city’s Border Gate inland boundary crossing between Macau and Zhuhai – the nearest mainland city, in Guangdong province – was the busiest. It handled 83,830 visitor arrivals in aggregate over the weekend.
The second busiest boundary checkpoint was the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge crossing, which handled an aggregate of 45,890 visitor arrivals for the same period.
The weekend also coincided with the debut of the 32nd Macao International Fireworks Display Contest, an event that usually attracts large crowds, including tourists.
Citigroup has trimmed its estimate for Macau’s September casino gross gaming revenue from the previous MOP18.5 billion to MOP18.25 billion, to reflect a “minor negative impact” from Typhoon Yagi at the start of the month.
