Macau’s Public Security Police Force revealed last week that a total of 136,650 visitors traveled to the special administrative region for the annual Golden Week holiday, (April 30-May 4), for an average of 27,300 visitors per day.
According to the Macau Government Tourism Office, the city’s average hotel occupancy rate was just short of 60 percent on Saturday, April 30, the highest single-day tally this year. But Macau Travel Industry Council President Andy Wu Keng Kuong suggested higher occupancy, telling Inside Asian Gaming that many hotels were 70 percent filled during the week-long holiday, and integrated resorts may have hit 80 percent.
The numbers remain depressed due to recent outbreaks of Covid-19 on the Chinese Mainland, with the final figure down 18 percent from 2021 May Golden Week numbers.
The Macau Daily Times reports that China has not veered from its zero-Covid policy, which shuts down borders and imposes other restrictions when breakouts occur. Beijing’s zero-Covid stance has impeded the gaming and hospitality industries. Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Vitaly Umansky noted that April results weren’t bad, given the pent-up demand for gambling and change in border controls, but results remained subdued. JPMorgan analysts DS Kim, Livy Lyu, and Amanda Cheng are looking to May for an improvement.
