Hundreds of thousands of visitors from mainland China have arrived in Macau for the three-day Labor Day holiday.
According to official data, the world’s largest gambling hub welcomed approximately 354,000 visitors over the first three days of the five-day Labor Day break in China.
The city’s Public Security Police has released some preliminary figures claiming that the average number of visitor arrivals in Macau during the holiday period stood at approximately 118,000 per day. The Police have not provided a breakdown for the place of origin of the gambling hub’s visitors for the first three days of the Labor Day break but reports say that about 40% of the tourists (or approximately 114,000 arrivals) entered the special administrative region (SAR) via the Border Gate checkpoint, which is the main land border between mainland China and Macau.
The latest increase in the number of visitors comes after both mainland China and the city of Macau lifted their strict Covid-19 restrictions at the beginning of the year, allowing visitors to come back to the gambling hub for the first time in more than three years. During the coronavirus pandemic, the world’s largest gambling hub closed its borders as part of the no-Covid policy of mainland China’s Government.
Labor Day Holiday Break Raises Demand for Macau’s Casino and Tourism Industries
According to figures released by local authorities, the former Portuguese colony welcomed more than 100,000 visitors each day on April 29th and April 30th, up from about 60,000 a day recorded in the previous days.
Macau authorities issued official data revealing that the special administrative region welcomed 109,196 visitor arrivals on the first day of the holiday break, April 29th. Then, 133,911 arrivals were registered on April 30th, which has been the largest registered daily total since early 2020, right before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country. On Labor Day (May 1st), Macau recorded a total of 110,823 visitor arrivals.
Before the coronavirus pandemic outbreak, the Labor Day holiday break has been a period of massive demand for the casino and tourism industries in Macau. According to official data, a total of 531,503 visitor arrivals for the first three days of the Labor Day holiday period were recorded in 2019, the most recent trading period before the Covid-19 pandemic, a figure that accounts for an average of about 177,000 arrivals every day.
As reported by travel data firm ForwardKeys, the special administrative region of Macau is the top destination for Chinese travelers in the period between April 17th and May 7th, with an 11% increase in the number of bookings from pre-pandemic levels in 2019. In comparison, the number of bookings in nearby Hong Kong dropped by 32% in the same period. According to estimates presented in a recent note of the investment banking company Credit Suisse AG, Macau could reach a daily average rate of casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) worth as much as MOP750 million in the first three days of the Labor Day holiday period.
Before the beginning of the festive period, Macau authorities had shared expectations for 70,000 people or more every day during the break.
