Macau may see 20pct rise in daily visitors for September’s Mid-Autumn Festival: travel rep

Macau may see up to 120,000 visitors daily on average during a three-day Chinese-mainland festive period in late September. That would be a 20 percent rise on a current daily average, which stood at “nearly 100,000” arrivals. The latter number was cited by Andy Wu Keng Kuong, president of the Travel Industry Council of Macau, a trade body. He mentioned that current tally in an interview with local news outlet Macao Daily News published on Tuesday. Mr Wu thinks that at minimum, daily arrivals for the Mid-Autumn Festival will be 110,000. That would nonetheless be 7.6 percent below the daily average of 119,000 for the first eight months of this year, per data from the city’s Public Security Police, which is responsible for entry checkpoints. China’s State Council has designated this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival as running from September 25, a Friday, to September 27, a Sunday, inclusive. This year there is only a three-day gap between that lunar-calendar festival, and the festivities surrounding China’s National Day on October 1. The State Council has decreed this year’s National Day holidays on the Chinese mainland – also known as October Golden Week – as running from October 1 to October 7. The mainland is Macau’s main tourism feeder market, and October Golden Week is usually a peak-demand period for Macau casino resorts. For the Mid-Autumn Festival, the city’s average hotel occupancy could peak at 90 percent, suggested Mr Wu. A fireworks contest being staged during the period, along with drone shows, could be a “core attraction” for visitors, Mr Wu additionally remarked to the news outlet. Chinese-mainland consumers remained Macau’s staple tourism segment in the first eight months of this year, accounting for an aggregate of 21.54 million visitor arrivals, up circa 10 percent year-on-year. Mainlanders represented 74.4 percent of the city’s overall 28.95-million visitor arrivals in the January to August period, according to Friday data from the Public Security Police.