Visitor spending falls 70% in first quarter

Visitor spending plummeted in the first quarter of 2020 in proportion to the decline in the number of arrivals, new data from the Statistics and Census Service shows.
Excluding gaming spending, total visitor spending was down 70.4% from a year earlier at 5.01 billion patacas. The decline was equally split between overnight visitors (3.78 billion patacas) and same-day visitors (1.23 billion patacas), which fell by 70.8% and 69.3% respectively.
The significant decline in visitor spending reflects the 68.9% fall in arrivals during the first quarter. January accounted for the majority of Macau’s 3.22 million first quarter visitor arrivals, before the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic was felt outside of mainland China.
In per-capita terms, visitor spending slipped just 4.8% year-on-year to 1,555 patacas in the first quarter. Per-capita spending of overnight visitors fell by 9% year-on-year to 2,484 patacas, while that of same-day visitors rose by 1.6% to 723 patacas. DB