The Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) said Friday that daily visitor numbers to Macau has remained above 50,000 even after the Chinese New Year holidays.
A total of 451,000 visitors visited Macau during this year’s Chinese New Year Golden Week from 21 to 27 January at a daily average of 64,000 visitors – three times the number of visitors during the same period in 2022 following the easing of border restrictions on 8 January.
MGTO Deputy Director Cheng Wai Tong said in an interview that the number of visitors to Macau has remained strong in recent weeks.
“The end of the Chinese New Year holidays is a low season for self-guided tourists, but the mainland has resumed group tours, so I believe we can increase the number of visitors in the future,” he added.
“The number of group tours is gradually increasing and MGTO will continue to monitor the situation of the tourism industry.”
He also pointed out that Macau’s international flights are gradually being restored, mainly to Southeast Asia.
“Macau’s flights to Southeast Asia have resumed, but the number of flights is still relatively low, making it difficult to attract overseas visitors to Macau,” he said.
“If the capacity of flights is restored, I believe the first phase of overseas visitors will be mainly from Southeast Asia.”
The MGTO had earlier proposed to introduce concessionary measures for visitors from Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as for international visitors, including accommodation concessions for those from Hong Kong.
“At present, the MGTO mainly handles group tours from the mainland, while the hotel concessions for Hong Kong visitors are being studied and does not have a timetable for launch,” Cheng explained.
The total number of visitors to Macau in 2019 was 39.4 million at an average of 108,000 per day. However, while the current average of around 50,000 is less than half of that 2019 figure, concessionaires and gaming analysts have praised the quality of visitor returning over the past month which has seen gross gaming revenues outperform pure visitation numbers.
Wynn Resorts last week said its mass table drop was already back to 95% of pre-COVID levels.
