The Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) said in a statement yesterday that the number of visitor arrivals on Sunday reached 39,606, which was close to the daily record of 41,000 last year (April 30), and was also the highest single-day number since the “618” COVID-19 outbreak.
”618” refers to Macau’s COVID-19 outbreak that began on June 18 last year and began to subside in late July.
With a raft of Chinese New Year (CNY) events to be held, the MGTO believes that the number of visitor arrivals will continue to increase, according to the statement.
The Chinese New Year of the Rabbit falls on January 22.
The statement pointed out that among Sunday’s 39,606 visitor arrivals, 32,860 were from the mainland and 5,630 were from Hong Kong, increases of 134.9 percent and 298.6 percent respectively compared with last year’s daily average of visitor arrivals.
In the past week from January 1-7, Macau recorded 143,926 visitor arrivals in total, with an average daily number of 20,561, representing an increase of 58.6 percent over the previous week of December 25-31 which logged 12,961 daily visitor arrivals, an increase of 62.8 percent over the average daily number of 12,630 last month, the statement noted.
MGTO has launched several promotion campaigns, such as five TikTok (aka Douyin in Putonghua) videos promoting its upcoming CNY events and Macau’s NAT-free entry rules, the statement said, adding that within just a few days, the total number of views reached 5.6 million, with “very positive” comments on the videos, showing that Macau has caught potential visitors’ attention.
The statement pointed out that MGTO has launched a raft of promotion campaigns to attract Hong Kong visitors, such as inviting Hong Kong internet celebrities (aka KOLs – Key Opinion Leaders) to travel to Macau, while different commercial sectors from Hong Kong are expected to visit Macau for business talks, in an effort to expand their source of customers.
Meanwhile, MGTO Deputy Director Ricky Hoi Io Meng told the local media on Sunday that local hotels’ recent room-booking rate was about 50 percent, adding that a reservation rate of about 30 to 50 percent was expected for the CNY holiday period.
In December 2019, the last month before Macau began to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the city recorded 3,083,406 visitor arrivals, amounting to a daily average of 99,465 in that month, according to Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) data.
Macau recorded its first novel coronavirus case on January 22, 2020.
Travellers explore the St Paul’s Ruins area on Sunday afternoon. – Photo: Yuki Lei
