Visitation to Macau was worse than expected through the better part of Chinese New Year.
The seven-day holiday, which ended last Wednesday, is normally China’s busiest travel period and an especially lucrative time for Macau’s casinos. This year, however, with visitation from Hong Kong effectively at a standstill, with travel advisories in place across mainland China to stem a fresh surge in Covid-19 infections and mandatory quarantines inhibiting travel from more than a dozen mainland cities, it was anything but.
The tally through February 15 fell just short of 63,000, a decline year on year of more than 71 percent, according to the Macau government’s count.
Ninety percent came from China, most entering by land through the various border crossings.
The daily average for the five days was 12,597. Local tourism officials were hoping for 16,000-20,000.
“So far, so bad, as expected,” said analysts with JP Morgan Securities, who described visitation through the first half of February as “dismal.”
Reports from JP Morgan Along and from analysts with brokerage Sandford Bernstein estimated gaming revenues through the first 15 days of February at MOP3 billion (US$375.7 million), a decrease of 78 percent compared with the same period last year and down from January by 23 percent.
Macau welcomed 260,000 tourists during CNY 2020, which ran January 24-30. It was, however, a time when the virus was beginning to make its impacts felt. Total arrivals for the holiday were down 78 percent from CNY 2019, a fact that makes this year’s volumes look that much worse.
Tourism officials, meanwhile, are pressing for better days ahead with a variety of initiatives aimed at boosting daily visits to 30,000 and to 6 million-10 million for the year.
If it happens it will be a dramatic improvement over 2020, when visitation plummeted from 2019’s 39.4 million to 5.89 million.
The Macao Government Tourism Office has developed a five-point program titled “Tourism +” designed to step up the marketing and promotion of the territory as a multifaceted destination.
