The Macau Tourism Industry Association’s president, Andy Wu, has told TDM that he expects 36 million visitors will visit Macao this year – and that “more than four million” of them will be from beyond Greater China.
Thirty-six million is more than 90 percent of the total logged in pre-pandemic 2019. Provisional data indicates 28.2 million visitors entered Macao in 2023, while just 5.7 million arrived during pandemic-impacted 2022.
In the first three quarters of 2023, almost 690,000 international visitors arrived in Macao, implying the year’s total may be around the one million mark (official data for the period has not yet been published).
[See more: The provisional tourism numbers are in for 2023]
The director of the Macao Government Tourism Office, Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, has said she expects around two million foreign tourists to visit in 2024, courtesy of government efforts to promote Macao in target markets like Indonesia and Malaysia.
Wu, however, was far more optimistic. “As for international tourists, I am very confident that we will be able to surpass the 2019 figures, that is, more than four million visitors,” he said.
He also predicted that the average hotel occupancy rate would be near 90 percent this year, 10 percentage points more than the rate in 2023.
