The Golden Week is a national holiday in the People’s Republic of China which lasts for seven days and encompasses numerous celebrations. It began back in 2000, and today it grants all workers in China a week off. They typically use that time to travel or spend it with their families.The number of Chinese people who travel during this time has been growing as the economy of the country has been booming. For the sake of comparison, only 28 million were travellers back in 1999. On the other hand, there were 589 million recorded travellers in 2016. Since Macau has become an enticing destination for travellers, it was forecasted that 2018 would be a record-breaking year for tourism given the city’s many entertainment venues and casinos.
The first day of the Golden Week had a strong start, but the number of visitors and money spent in Macau showed a steady decrease over time. For example, on September 27 there were more than 50% more visitors in comparison to the same date last year. It is a pre-holiday time and a lot of tourists were already expected to start flowing in. However, the next day was a Friday but there was only a 1.6% increase in a year-to-year comparison. Saturday also saw a decline in comparison to 2017. In fact, a 12% decline was recorded, which was a hard hit as many tourists were expected to start flowing in during that period. The largest source of people who visit Macau is mainland China. Out of 138,122 tourists that were recorded on September 27, 116,608 were residents of the People’s Republic of China. When analyzing only this group, the increase was as much as 70.3%. However, on Saturday the decline of Chinese tourists was 15.2% as only 84,895 people from China came to Macau during that period.
But the news isn’t all that bad. In fact, the first six days of the Golden Week saw a jump with regards to the number of tourists in Macau. As a matter of fact, there were 11.8% more visitors in comparison to the same period of 2017, which is actually a pretty good number. If we only focus on the visitors from China, the jump is even greater – 18.9%. When put in numbers, there were a total of 677,078 visitors that came from the mainland during the Golden Week. The revenue was also great according to Morgan Stanley. However, they stated that people may not continue this trend during the month of October. Nevertheless, it is estimated that the revenue growth for October in comparison to October 2017 will be up to 7%.
