Macau’s Golden Week visitation has maintained its strength through the first four days of this year’s eight-day holiday period, reaching an aggregate of 530,312 visitor arrivals at an average of 132,578 per day.
The four-day tally comes after the SAR welcomed 133,458 visitors on Monday, up 436% year-on-year although slightly down on previous days after more than 150,000 people entered on both Saturday and Sunday.
By comparison, there were 974,337 arrivals across the full seven-day Golden Week period in 2019 at an average of 131,191 per day, while COVID-impacted 2022 saw around 182,000 arrivals at an average of just 26,000 per day.
Of the total 530,312 visitor arrivals so far in Golden Week 2023, 385,823 have come from mainland China while 110,990 have come from Hong Kong. Monday saw 108,279 mainland arrivals, up 385% year-on-year, and 18,882 Hong Kong arrivals, up 925%.
This year’s Golden Week holiday period will last for eight days rather than the usual seven due to the convergence of the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holidays.
The strong visitor numbers follow Macau’s Gaming Inspection Bureau (DICJ) publishing its monthly GGR results on Sunday, which showed September gaming revenues declining month-on-month. However analysts estimate October will see the highest revenue results of the year on the back of the Golden Week holiday period.