Macau tourist arrivals down 6.1pc during LNY Golden Week

Macau welcomed some 1.01 million visitors during the Lunar New Year Golden Week from January 28 to February 2,  a 6.1 percent decline year-on-year.

Macao Government Tourism Office announced on Monday that the enclave saw most tourists between Jan 31 and Feb 2, with daily totals on all three days exceeding the expectations of 185,000.

It added that some 219,100 visited Macau on Jan 31, representing the highest single-day number since the pandemic and a 9.1 percent increase year-on-year.

However, total visitors from the mainland during the golden week fell 8.3 percent to 760,400 while arrivals from Hong Kong dropped 3.2 percent to 184,500.

Meanwhile, the latest report by financial service provider UBS said Macau received an average of 186,000 tourists daily on the first five days of the LNY holiday, up four percent on last year.

The company said this marked a 98 percent recovery of pre-pandemic levels, with the proportion of mainland tourists reaching 75 percent in the first four days of the holiday -- the same as that in LNY in 2019.

The number of daily average visitors from the mainland also increased by six percent year-on-year to 139,000 in the first four days, returning to the level in the same period in 2019.

(Charlotte Lam)