Academics not expecting much from Macau’s Golden Week as mainland pandemic repeats

September 8, 2022 China Earnings & Filings

COVID-19 outbreaks in mainland China have been growing in recent weeks, with more than 1,500 people infected in a single day on Wednesday and confirmed cases across multiple provinces, including Guangzhou and Shenzhen, both neighboring Macau.

This has led some Macau academics to offer pessimism about the upcoming October “Golden Week”, stating that the number of visitors to Macau will not increase due to the pandemic situation on the mainland and the ongoing issue of Individual Visit Scheme visas.

The President of the Macau Responsible Gaming Association, Song Wai Kit, said that the situation in the past two years had shown that an increase in the flow of people would likely lead to a local outbreak.

“Mainland visitors to Macau are now thinking about the possibility of a sudden outbreak of the pandemic which would prevent them from going back [home] … plus there is now an [outbreak] in Guangdong Province, with almost half of Shenzhen under lockdown and Zhuhai having a large-scale NAT test today.

“The pandemic has affected the confidence of visitors to Macau and I believe that this year’s Golden Week is not promising.”

Macau’s gambling revenue from January to August has reached only MOP$28.9 billion (US$3.58 billion), down 53.4% from last year and tracking well below the government’s MOP$130 billion estimate for the year.