Christmas season sees 20% increase in tourist arrivals

The Christmas season has seen an average of 24,000 daily visitor arrivals to Macau, with the hotel occupancy rate reaching nearly 70%.
Aside from the week being a festive season, the uptick may be attributed to the government’s initiative to collaborate with different firms including Tencent, Alibaba, Ctrip, UnionPay International and Air Macau. The collaboration kicked off special offers to attract tourists.
According to data issued yesterday by the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO), the average number of daily visitors was 24,503 from December 23 to 27, while the average daily number of inbound visitors from the mainland was 22,826.
On Christmas Day, December 25, the number of tourist arrivals recorded reached 27,755, which is the second highest single-day visitor arrival figure in the 10 months since the pandemic broke out this year, following the practice day of the Macau Grand Prix (GP) on November 20. Approximately 28,000 tourists visited the city on the first GP day.
During the five-day Christmas holiday period, tourist arrivals recorded a growth of 20.2%, when compared with the daily average of 20,385 visitors from December 1 to 22.
This festive season brought high hopes to local businesses and authorities as it looked at a bounce in visitor arrival numbers following the downfall brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, according to information provided by the industry, the average occupancy rate of hotel venues (hotels and apartments) from December 23 to 27 was 69.4%, among which the average occupancy rate of three-star to five-star hotels reached and exceeded 70%.
Compared with December 1 to 22, five-star hotels recorded an uptick of 22.25%, and 29.4% compared to November.
As the mainland resumes the issuing of visas for its residents to travel to Macau, the MGTO said that it continues to strengthen tourism promotion on social media platforms and has cooperated with various online travel agencies to launch promotional products for travel to Macau.

Hotel occupancy rate stood at 44% in November
Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated the average occupancy rate of guest rooms in November was 43.9%, representing a month-to-month growth of 4.1 percentage points but a year-on-year decrease of 48 percentage points.
The occupancy rate of 3-star hotels stood at 55.1%.
A total of 473,000 guests checked into hotels & guesthouses in November, indicating a decline of 59.3% year-on-year. Guests from mainland China dropped by 49.3% year-on-year to 404,000.
From January to November 2020, a total of 260,000 package tour visitors were recorded, a decline of 96.7% year-on-year; outbound residents using the services of travel agencies tumbled by 93.2% to 110,000.