Macao could welcome as many as 35 million visitors this year, according to the chairman of the Travel Industry Council of Macau, Andy Wu, who spoke in a recent TDM interview.
This forecast is equivalent to 90 percent of the more than 39.4 million visitors who set foot in the SAR in pre-pandemic 2019 and is 1 million higher than the revised official projections.
Local authorities had expected this year’s visitor numbers to reach 33 million visitors, although this was later revised after data showed the city had already broken the 30 million mark in mid-November.
Wu based his current prediction on the slew of events that have been lined up for December, which he believes will attract visitors to the city. They include the handover fireworks display, the Light Up Macao festival of illuminations, and the inaugural show set to take place at the newly completed outdoor performance venue next to the Lisboeta.
[See more: International hotel guests rise in October]
In a separate interview, the head of the Macau Hotel Association, Jocelyn Wong, told TDM that local hotels are expected to maintain a high occupancy level of 90 percent or more between the Christmas and Chinese New Year.
Wong said she believes the visitor arrival rate would remain high and would continue to do so until the Chinese New Year, thanks to the large-scale events that are being continuously organised in Macao.
While the November hotel occupancy numbers have yet to be officially published, the hotel industry representative described them as “high” and “extremely good.”
In October, Macao had an above average hotel occupancy figure of 87.3 percent, a jump of 4.5 percent year-on-year. For the first ten months of this year, the SAR’s hotel industry also performed robustly, with the hotel occupancy rate averaging at 85.6 percent, a year-on-year increase of 4.8 percent. Meanwhile, total guest numbers grew 9.3 percent to 12.1 million.
