Macao welcomed some 366,935 visitors to the territory over the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, according to official figures.
The average number of daily arrivals during the four days Dragon Boat Festival holiday from 22 June to 25 June stood at more than 91,730 – comfortably beating travel industry expectations, local media reported. This comes in the wake of a 2.6 percent month-to-month drop in arrivals in May.
Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, the head of the Macau Government Tourism Office, described the latest figures as “very satisfying” and said that more resources would now be spent on luring foreign travellers to Macao as the domestic market had “stabilised.”
[See more: The number of visitors to Macao fell in May]
She confirmed that there were no plans to extend a major, months-long promotion that saw free return bus or ferry tickets given to visitors arriving from Hong Kong and spending at least one night in Macao.
Instead, she said preparations to launch a buy-one-get-one-free deal on plane tickets were underway. The MGTO would also be holding roadshows in Singapore and Malaysia, Senna Fernandes added.
Macao is anxious to increase the number of foreign tourists in order to reduce its heavy dependence on the mainland Chinese gaming market. Less than 5 percent of the 2,107,832 visitors to Macao in May came from outside Greater China.
