Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) has told GGRAsia the city has seen a “considerable” volume of inbound visitors not only during Chinese New Year (CNY), but also “before and after” the peak holiday period, meaning the daily average had been held at “over 100,000”. The information was in response to GGRAsia’s enquiry.
It said a portion of visitors from mainland China – the most important feeder market for Macau’s tourism trade – had seemingly “started to stagger” their outbound travel, instead of heading to Macau during the official holiday period, which ran for eight days from January 28 to February 4 this time.
The latter is sometimes referred to by the local hospitality sector and analysts covering Macau casino business, as ‘Chinese New Year Golden Week’.
“MGTO would continue to encourage mainland tourists to stagger their travel time, so that the festive impact could be prolonged and benefit [Macau] communities’ businesses in periods beyond the [holiday] peak days,” the office stated.
The tourism office’s response regarding non-holiday volume was in the context of GGRAsia asking why the holiday volume had – at a 163,696 daily average – been circa 13 percent below MGTO’s 185,000 forecast.
The 1.31 million tally for Chinese New Year Golden Week this time was down 3.5 percent compared to the same break in 2024, when the festive period was in February, and China’s official holiday started on the first day of Chinese New Year, rather than the eve.
The overall inbound volume during this year’s holiday season was still deemed “satisfactory”, remarked the tourism office.
The year-on-year decline has been mainly led by a lower volume of mainland China and Hong Kong visitors, MGTO also noted. Though those from Taiwan and the international markets, had risen by “20 percent” and “10 percent” year-on-year, respectively, the office said. The base for those two segments was significantly smaller than for the mainland and Hong Kong.
The mainland’s official designation of major holiday periods there, had always been the “standard” for MGTO in gathering and interpreting festive-period visitor data, the office noted to GGRAsia.
During the 2024 Chinese New Year holiday – running from February 10 to 17 inclusive that time – Macau had logged an aggregate of nearly 1.36 million visitor arrivals, which translated to a daily average of 169,588, according to archive data from MGTO. The average daily number of Macau’s visitor arrivals of the entire February 2024 had been 113,571, a separate set of data from Statistics and Census Service shows.
