Macau recorded 896,847 visitor arrivals during the mainland’s October 1-7 Golden Week holiday, an increase of 5.7 percent from the same time last year, the Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) said in a statement Thursday.
The MGTO figures differ slightly from statistics released by the Public Security Police (PSP) earlier this week, according to which Macau recorded 901,176 visitors during the Golden Week holiday, up 6.16 percent year-on-year.
According to the MGTO statement cited by The Macau Post Daily, mainlanders accounted for 80.6 percent of the total number of Golden Week visitor arrivals. The statement put the increase in the number of mainland visitor arrivals at 12.1 percent.
The statement also said that in the wake of the mainland’s new tourism law, which took effect on October 1 and bans so-called “zero-fare tours,” the number of mainland visitor arrivals at the Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal dropped 11.8 percent year-on-year during the Golden Week holiday.
According to the statement, the number of visitor arrivals from the mainland at the Taipa Temporary Ferry Terminal decreased 27.58 percent, while the number of mainland arrivals at the Inner Harbour Ferry Terminal was down 33.13 percent.
The statement pointed out that most mainland tour groups arrive in Macau via Hong Kong from Shenzhen.
Three- to five-star hotels’ average occupancy rate during the Golden Week holiday stood at 88.71 percent, an increase of just 0.21 percentage points from a year earlier.
Room rates for three- to five-star hotels rose 11.04 percent year-on-year to an average of 1,933.71 patacas during the weeklong holiday.
On average, guesthouses’ rooms rates rose 16.83 percent to 615,17 patacas, while five-star hotels’s rates averaged 2,387,97 patacas a night.(macaunews)
