Macau chalks up dismal ‘Golden Week’ visitation numbers

In Macau and this year’s edition of the annual ‘Golden Week’ national holiday reportedly proved disappointing as the city saw the number of inbound tourists decline by 85.7% year-on-year to just 139,280.

According to a report from GGRAsia, Macau welcomed some 974,000 foreign visitors during last year’s ‘Golden Week’ period at an average daily rate of around 139,200. The source also detailed that about 81% of these had been mainland Chinese although a comparable drop of 83.6% for the most recent episode subsequently saw the aggregated tally for this important group struggle to reach 130,000.

Early expectations:

Running across the first week of October, the annual ‘Golden Week’ public holiday commemorates the establishment of the modern state of China and has regularly involved large numbers of mainland tourists visiting Macau in order to enjoy the enclave’s plethora of entertainment and gambling facilities. The 2020 edition was reportedly being seen as a key indicator on the city’s post-pandemic prospects and had even been prefaced by an assertion that area five-star hotel bookings were already hovering at around the 80% mark.

Dreary display:

However, Inside Asian Gaming used its own report to explain that Saturday had represented the peak day in terms of ‘Golden Week’ visitation as approximately 22,100 people entered Macau. This source clarified that the Sunday had subsequently seen this rate drop by 75.3% year-on-year to roughly 19,000 with the vast majority of these crossing into the city via the Gongbei Border Gate facility.

Lingering lull:

It has been a disappointing 2020 for the 39 casinos in Macau as the sector has recently experienced six consecutive months in which aggregated gross gaming revenues have fallen by at least 90% year-on-year. These coronavirus-related diminutions were reportedly prefaced by 11.3%, 87.8% and 79.7% regressions for January, February and March respectively to see the industry’s current combined nine-month receipt tally sitting some 82.4% lower year-on-year at $4.83 billion.