A strong weekend has helped push visitor arrivals to Macau during Golden Week up almost 12% on 2016 numbers, making amends for a slow October start according to figures from the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO).
Macau welcomed 131,879 visitors on Friday – a 36.7% year-on-year increase – and another 109,084 on Saturday, up 60.2% year-on-year, to lift total arrivals for the first seven days of the month to 844,522, representing an 11.6% on the 770,000 who visited during the same period last year.
They included 100,526 arrivals from mainland China on Friday (+38.6%) and 75,298 on Saturday (+82%) as total arrivals surged from just a 1.9% year-on-year increase as of Thursday. Visitor numbers for the first four days of Golden Week (Sunday through Wednesday) had shown a 2% decline, with mainland Chinese visitation down 5.1%.
The preliminary MGTO figures don’t include arrivals on Sunday 8 October, with the extra day associated with Golden Week this year set to ensure a significant final year-on-year numbers boost in 2017.
Union Gaming analyst Grant Govertsen had previously predicted 10% year-on-year GGR growth in October to around MOP$24 billion on the back of an “exceptionally strong” Golden Week, which would represent “the highest absolute level of GGR since late 2014.”
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