The gallop begins, but is Macau ready?

Lynzy Valles

Macau’s tourism engine is running at full speed again during Chinese New Year. Visitor numbers have risen, surpassing the government’s cautious projections. Streets are crowded, and businesses are reportedly benefiting.

Even before last week, the Chinese New Year season had already left Macau jam-packed, from the narrow alleyways in the city center to the main thoroughfares.

There is nothing new about this. On typical weekends, Rua da Cunha is often packed – not to mention the streets leading to the Ruins of St. Paul’s, which are most of the time impassable, even on weekdays.

The 2026 Chunyun (Spring Festival travel rush), which runs for 40 days from February 2 to March 13, is expected by Beijing authorities to record about 9.5 billion passenger trips.

Figures from mainland authorities show that, as of Sunday, China’s Spring Festival travel rush had passed its halfway point, with inter-regional passenger trips reaching 5.08 billion in the first 20 days.

In Macau, visitor arrivals have reached 1.5 million, slightly higher than the government’s cautious projection. Gaming activity is also expected to remain high, as usual.

For all of 2026, the local government expects total visitor volume of about 41 million, which translates to an average of 112,328 visitors per day.

From a business and government perspective, the figure is encouraging and helps the city meet its economic targets. Who would not want that?

Yet the city’s biggest challenge is not how many people arrive – because they will arrive anyway – but whether Macau can truly handle them.

What does it mean when tens of thousands of people move through a city whose streets and transportation networks are already stretched thin?

Anyone who has taken buses such as routes 25 or 21A heading toward Cotai knows the experience: passengers packed so tightly that breathing space becomes a luxury.

Residents commuting to work and tourists visiting the Cotai Strip are squeezed into the same system – one many locals wish were different.

Macau will always attract large visitor flows – after all, what is Asia’s Vegas without millions of visitors? But the real challenge goes beyond arrival numbers to how the city manages what happens once visitors are here.

Right from the border, people can be seen rushing to catch taxis that are already in short supply, sometimes jostling others who are simply lining up for public transit.

Transportation remains the city’s biggest bottleneck.

With the government planning to gradually add 800 taxis to the city’s roads, bringing the total number to 2,000, the question is whether this expansion will be sufficient to serve the hundreds of thousands of people circulating in the city during peak periods.

Tourism is also about ensuring visitors can move comfortably, explore freely, and leave with a positive experience that encourages return visits.

Without substantial structural improvements in public transit capacity and traffic management, service quality may deteriorate.

Numbers do not lie, but tourism is not simply about counting arrivals – at least not when it comes to quality.

Hence, the more persistent task is balancing quantity with quality.

How can the city ensure that economic benefits do not come at the cost of mobility and comfort?

Macau is poised to gallop into the Year of the Horse – but the direction of the stride remains a question.