The Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) said in a statement yesterday that on Friday and Saturday (July 16-17) the city recorded 33,000 and 32,000 visitor arrivals respectively, noting that it was the first time since May 28 that the number had once again topped 30,000 on a single day.
According to the statement, thanks to the COIVD-19 pandemic situation in Guangdong stabilising and the validity period of the nucleic acid test (NAT) having been extended from 48 hours to seven days, the number of visitors has gradually risen.
The statement credited various sectors’ efforts for helping revitalise the city’s economy so that in the first five months of the year visitor arrivals and hotel occupancy rates have been increasing. The statement noted that from July 1 to 15 the average hotel occupancy rate reached 52.1 percent, while in June it was just 43.7 percent, which was an 8.4 percentage point increase.
Moreover, since the launch of Macau “Stay, Dine and See” campaign in April, around 30,000 people have signed up for the local tours and around 38,000 hotel staycation packages were sold, according to the statement, The statement said during the summer holiday, more residents were expected to be joining the local tours or having a staycation, which would help the local tourism industry’s revival.
The statement pointed out that nowadays visitors from the vast majority of mainland cities do not need to go through mandatory quarantine after entering Macau, adding that MGTO seized the opportunity by launching online and offline promotions targeting mainlanders. The statement said that the promotion drive aimed to send out the message that Macau is a “healthy safe and quality travel destination”. MGTO pledged to continue working on increasing the number of visitor arrivals in order to further revitalise the local tourism industry.
The Macau government has imposed a 14-day mandatory hotel quarantine on arrivals from Ruili city and Longchuan county of the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan province.
This undated handout photo provided by the Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) yesterday shows residents on an open-top double decker bus driving through Cotai as one of the attractions of MGTO’s popular “Stay, Dine and See” programme.
