Macau Golden Week concludes with visitation down 85.7%

Just 139,280 visitors arrived in Macau during this year’s October Golden Week, down 85.7% year-on-year as COVID-19 continues to haunt the SAR’s gaming operators.

Despite Chinese authorities restoring the Individual Visit Scheme for all of mainland China on 23 August, visitor numbers remained subdued throughout the usually busy holiday period with a peak of just 22,116 arrivals on Saturday.

That compares to a t otal of 980,000 arrivals during the entire seven-day Golden Week period last year, which represented an 11.5% increase over 2018 levels.

The final day of this year’s Golden Week on Wednesday saw 19,115 arrivals, down 75.3% year-on-year. According to figures from the Public Security Police Force, mainland Chinese visitation declined 83.6% to 129,967.

Of the 139,280 visitors to enter during this year’s holiday period, 97,126 came via the Gongbei Border Gate, 4,190 by ferry and 7,149 by plane.

As previously reported by Inside Asian Gaming, analysts are predicting a GGR decline of around 70% in October amid hopes that visitation might start showing some meaningful improvement from the middle of the month.