Tourism | Travel association hopeful visitor arrivals will climb to 26 million this year

The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) is forecasting that the Macau SAR will receive a total of 26.42 million visitors this year, according to information accessed by Portuguese newspaper Tribuna de Macau. That implies the city should welcome over 2.8 million visitors per month in the final eight months of the year.
Macau recorded 3.2 million visitors during the first quarter of the year, 68% fewer than in the same period of 2019. The territory received little more than 200,000 visitors in April.
The plunge was due to the global travel restrictions amid the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly the central government’s halt in issuing individual visas and group tour permits for its citizens, who represent Macau’s top source market.
From January to March 2019, the SAR recorded nearly 10.3 million visitors, which itself showed a 21.2% decrease year-on-year.
PATA, an association the Macao Government Tourism Office has been part of since 1958, predicts that 18.46 million tourists will arrive from mainland China, while 4.97 million of the city’s tourists will come from Hong Kong. Some 660,000 are expected from Taiwan.
Last year, there were 27.9 million, 7.3 million and nearly 1.1 million tourists arriving from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan respectively.
Currently, the central government is still not issuing group tour visas or individual visas to its citizens, while the recent halt in the public operations of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and ferry services has hindered Hong Kong tourists from coming in.
However, despite the possibility of the Individual Visit Scheme resuming later this month, most analysts expect tourist spending will be lower than normal as mainland tourists are also recovering from the economic effects of Covid-19.
Meanwhile, PATA also estimates that about 470,000 tourists are expected to arrive from South Korea, 360,000 from the Philippines, 150,000 from Thailand, 220,000 from Japan and 190,000 from the U.S. this year.
Aside from the expectations of an imminent and strong recovery this year, PATA also predicts that Macau will record some 46.69 million tourist arrivals in 2021. By comparison, Macau welcomed just under 38 million at its peak last year, when concerns of overtourism were at their height and the local tourism board agreed to study the introduction of a tourist tax.
Meanwhile, PATA’s CEO Mario Hardy said that there still remains a significant volume of visitors expected into Asia Pacific through 2020, despite obvious reductions in arrivals.
“We can only hope that this pandemic is brought under absolute control quickly and effectively, enabling the global travel and tourism industry to get back on its feet, re-employ the millions of people who lost their positions and create even more employment opportunities both directly and for the upstream and downstream sectors that rely on it,” said Hardy.
PATA stated that Asia is predicted to spearhead a return to visitor growth across Asia Pacific in 2021.