Macau welcomes over one million visitors during first six days of CNY

With almost a million visitors in only six days, Macau’s Chinese New Year (CNY) tourism boom has surpassed forecasts.

The Public Security Police Force has released new figures showing that, as of 9:00 p.m. on Thursday, 156,730 travelers had arrived in Macau, bringing the total number of passengers to 1,094,232.

Analysts Praveen K. Choudhary and Gareth Leung point out that Chinese tourist arrivals are surpassing the levels seen during the October Golden Week of 2023 and the 2019 Chinese New Year, with a noteworthy rise in air arrivals, in Morgan Stanley’s most recent market analysis. This upward trend, in their opinion, is encouraging for gross gaming revenue (GGR) estimates.

Morgan Stanley estimates Macau’s gross domestic product (GGR) for February to be MOP20 billion ($2.5 billion), or MOP 691 million ($85.9 million) on average per day. This estimate represents 79% of the 2019 GGR level and a 4% increase over the previous month.

The researchers report that Chinese travel during the first four days of the Lunar New Year (February 10–13) is up 17% over the 2019 CNY period and up 21% over the October Golden Week of 2023. In December 2023, this contrasts with a 6% decline from 2019.

Additionally, it is anticipated that Chinese air arrivals would rise by 46% in comparison to the October Golden Week of 2023 and fall by just 2% from CNY 2019 levels. Chinese plane arrivals in December 2023 were for just 81% of the total in 2019.

Original story by: Asia Gaming Brief