The first seven days of this year’s Spring Festival Golden Week saw a rise in visitors to Macau of 2.55% to 1,232,569 visitors, 30,657 more than 2019, according to Public Security Police Force (PSP) official figures cited by the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO).
Nevertheless, 2019 had the most visitors in a single day, with 226,326 on the third day of the new year. By contrast, this year was 8,785 short with only 217,541 visitors.
This year’s higher visitor count occurred on the first three days of the Lunar New Year, with entries always significantly higher than in 2019, as the Times reported late last week.
The calendar factor
One possible reason for this year’s higher visitor numbers was that, in 2019, the first day of the Lunar New Year was a Monday (Feb. 4), while this year it was a Saturday (Feb. 10) coinciding with a weekend, which always brings more visitors to Macau.
Also, during 2019’s “Golden Week,” there was only one weekend at the end of the week.
But this year, the new year began on a weekend, which was followed by a public holiday in Macau on the Monday and the neighboring region, namely Hong Kong.
The MGTO calculated this year’s Golden Week as eight days rather than the usual seven.
This means Macau’s daily visitor average has, in reality, dropped from the 176,081 (at the end of the seventh day) to 169,725 on the eighth day, Saturday, Feb. 17.
The results on the number of visitors were not as high as in the previous days with 125,234 visitors crossing the local border, a figure like any regular weekend so far in 2024.
Nevertheless, over the eight days of festive season, Macau received 1.36 million visitors.
Market sources remained steady
As expected, visitors from mainland China topped the list of market sources by a large margin with the results after eight days showing that 76.2% of all visitors entering Macau came from the mainland.
Compared to the results obtained after the first five days, the ratio of mainland visitors only grew marginally by 0.1% from the previous 76.1%. In total, 1,034,503 visitors arrived from the mainland.
As for mainland China, Hong Kong visitor numbers remained steady but, in this case, noting a slightly higher increase, from 18.4% at the end of the fifth day, to 18.7% at the end of the week.
In total, 253,453 visitors from the neighboring region entered Macau during the festive season.
While both the mainland and Hong Kong grew their representation in the market sources, the number of foreigner visitors fell, the group the local government has declared it wants most to attract.
PSP analysis shows all other foreign nationals, including those from Taiwan, fell 0.4% at the end of the week when compared to the first five days, reaching only 5.1% of the market share, i.e., the equivalent to 69,847 visitors.
Together, the two larger market sources (mainland China and Hong Kong) accounted for some 94.86% of the total visitors.
Foreign visitors slightly down from the trend
A closer analysis of the PSP’s daily figures, released before verification and cross-information, shows 60,658 foreign visitors to Macau over the eight days of the Golden Week.
This is 4.47% of the total, and it is below the 5% reached during last year’s National Day Golden Week.
It is also below the 4.63% recorded during last year’s Spring Festival Golden Week.
The daily figures of foreign visitor entries to Macau reveal a slight difference in the trend of these visitors when compared to the general numbers.
The general figures show an exponential rise in visitor numbers in the first three days, which also happens for foreigners, then a slight fall that continues until the eighth day.
There is a major drop in foreign visitation from the third to the fourth day (11,260 to 7,360) followed by a further drop to 5,327 on the fifth day (the lowest result of the period).
From then, the figures began to recover slightly on the sixth and seventh days (5,772) before dropping again on the last day (5,470).
This trend also occurred, although in a slightly different manner, with the figure of the visitors from Taiwan dropping significantly on the fourth day, recovering slightly on the next and dropping to a minimum on the sixth of the eight days and starting to recover on the last two days.
Hotel occupancy during CNY at 95%
The average hotel occupancy rate reached 95% overall and peaked at nearly 98% on the fourth day of the Chinese New Year.
According to figures from industry operators, local hotel establishments saw an average occupancy rate of 95.2% during the Spring Festival Golden Week, a year-on-year increase of nearly 10 percentage points.
The hotel occupancy rate peaked at 97.9% on the fourth day of Chinese New Year (Feb. 13).
The average room rate of Macau’s hotel establishments (including hotels, apartment hotels and economical accommodation establishments) was around MOP1,922 during the Golden Week, a year-over-year growth of 23.4%.
China sees over 13m entry-exit trips during CNY
China saw around 13.52 million inbound and outbound trips during the eight-day Spring Festival holiday that ended Saturday, marking a 2.8-fold increase from the same holiday period last year, according to the National Immigration Administration.
Border inspection agencies across China handled a daily average of about 1.69 million inbound and outbound trips during the period, the administration said.
The total entry-exit trips during the holiday returned to 90% of the level in 2019, according to the administration.
Border inspection agencies checked 459,000 vehicles, including ships, trains, and automobiles, representing a 1.6-fold increase from that of the same period in 2023.
Seaports, land ports and airports across the country witnessed stable and orderly customs clearance, with cross-border trips through land ports in Guangdong Province, Hong Kong and Macau accounting for 73.1% of the total, the administration said.
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