January arrivals plunge due to Covid-19 outbreaks in neighboring cities

Visitor arrivals stood at 694,430 in January, representing a decrease of 15.4% in arrivals month-on-month due to the tightening of border-control measures between Zhuhai and Macau.

January saw a series of new outbreaks in the neighbouring region, causing local authorities to impose strict border entry measures to deter the spread of new Covid-19 variants.

The SAR government has shortened the validity of negative nucleic acid test (NAT) results for those entering Macau from Zhuhai in the wake of the new cases, discouraging tourists from traveling to Macau.

The aforementioned arrivals figure, however, is an increase of 24.7% when compared year-on-year, according to data from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).

Same-day visitors (450,428) surged by 56.5% year-on-year, whereas overnight visitors (244,002) dropped by 9.3%. 

Meanwhile, the average length of stay of visitors shortened by 0.3 day year-on-year to 1.3 days, while the proportion of same-day visitors (64.9%) grew by 13.2 percentage points.

Regarding the origin point of visitors, the number of visitors from mainland China grew by 29.4% year-on-year to 642,016, with 167,771 of such visitors travelling as part of the Individual Visit Scheme. 

There were 44,380 visitors from Hong Kong and 7,896 visitors from Taiwan.

Last month, the city’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) also recorded a plunge of 20.3% month-to-month, to MOP6.34 billion.