The Macau Government Tourism Office expects 2019 visitor arrivals to the Chinese gambling hub to approach a record 40 million.
Director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes attributed the robust forecast in part to the impact of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge, which opened at the end of October 2018 and significantly boosted visitation in the last two months of last year.
She noted that visitor arrivals were up 11 percent during China’s weeklong National Day Golden Week holiday earlier this month, thanks to a 9 percent increase in the number of mainland visitors and a jump of 40 percent in visits from Hong Kong, the largest percentage increase of any market and a further indication of the positive impact of the new bridge.
Visitor arrivals in August rose 6.5 percent year-on-year to 3.6 million, more than 12 percent of them coming via the bridge.
Through the first eight months of the year, official figures show 27.4 million arrivals, up 18 percent over 2018.
