Tourism | Booking data substantiates rapidly growing tourist demand

Booking data released by Trip.com, the largest online travel agency in China, yesterday provided compelling evidence of China’s rapidly growing tourism demand for travel to Macau during the forthcoming Labor Day holiday, also known as the May Day holiday or May Golden Week, from May 1 to 5.
As of April 8, the total number of bookings for Macau travel products during the May Day holiday through the Trip.com platform had risen by 20% compared to 2019, the group disclosed in a statement.
“The continuing rise in popularity among mainland Chinese travelers for destinations such as Macau further evidences the vast amount of pent-up travel demand that exists,” Trip.com explained.
In addition, the search volume for flights in and out of Macau climbed by over 140% from [April], the group said.
A sharply rising demand for excursions in Macau also prompted the cost of air tickets to surge “rapidly” too. According to Trip.com, the average economy class fare in and out of Macau “increased by over 50%” from prices listed in early April.
According to a statement released by the market intelligence for the aviation and travel industry, CAPA, on April 12, Air Macau is planning to increase its route frequencies to Shanghai and Beijing ahead of the May Day holiday in order to capture the growing tourist demand.
The demand for accommodation in Macau has seen a sharp uptick as well. The number of bookings for Macau hotels through Ctrip, a platform within Trip.com Group, is double that of the same period in 2019.
Furthermore, the room price of high-end hotels increased “significantly” by around 30% from that of the Ching Ming Festival holiday in early April.
Currently, Macau is still the only city destination where mainland holidaymakers are not required to observe a 14-day mandatory quarantine period upon arrival and upon their return to China.
When there are still some weeks before the arrival of May Golden Week, Trip.com’s optimistic statistics are heralding an accelerated rebound in Macau’s tourism industry.
Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes said earlier that she is anticipating an increase in tourist numbers in the coming Golden Week. However, this will be predicated on a stable pandemic situation in China, she added.
Apart from the MGTO, the international investment bank, JP Morgan, is also anticipating Macau’s gross gaming revenue (GGR) to ramp up during the May holiday, partly due to a continuously improving travel desire and the release of pent-up travel demand among mainland tourists.
“We expect GGR to keep improving sequentially in April (MOP8.4-9.0 billion) and May (MOP11 billion), with the pace of recovery ramping-up from the May Golden Week, and to further accelerate into the second half with more re-opening and travel easing,” the bank stated earlier.