Macau enjoyed a strong start to the annual Golden Week holiday for Chinese New Year, with visitation on the opening day rising 21.7% year-on-year to 84,777.
The increase was primarily driven by mainland China, from where the number of visitors increased 32.9% to 53,102 including 28,451 via the border gate.
Last year Macau welcomed a total of 963,265 visitors during Chinese New Year, up 6.5% on 2017 numbers, with 716,041 of those coming from the mainland.
Union Gaming analyst Grant Govertsen recently predicted a strong month for Macau in February, despite GGR through January falling 5% – its first monthly year-on-year decline since July 2016.
“With the pendulum swinging both ways, February this year will benefit from timing as it faces an easy February comp (+5.7%) and there should be very little pre-CNY slowdown to contend with as most of the traditional pre-CNY slowdown would have hit January this year,” Govertsen said.
“Regardless, our on-the-ground conversations and observations … have pointed to what feels like the beginnings of a robust holiday period.”
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