Macau welcomed just 8,159 visitor arrivals for the entirety of Golden Week, with the average 1,166 arrivals per day representing a 93.7% year-on-year decline from the 156,000 or 22,286 per day who arrived over the same period last year.
It was also 99.2% lower than the 980,000 or 140,000 per day during October Golden Week in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
This year’s National Day holiday period, which was heavily impacted by border restrictions with Zhuhai due to new COVID cases in Macau, saw numbers decline as the week progresses – from 1,749 on 1 October and 1,784 on 3 October to just 498 on 6 October and 418 on 7 October.
Around half of all arrivals entered Macau via the border gate with the remainder either via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge or by plane.
Arrivals from mainland China comprised 7,393 of the total 8,159 arrivals.
The border between Macau and Zhuhai was effectively shut on 26 September after security guards at a quarantine hotel tested positive to COVID-19, while another four new cases detected among a group of non-resident construction workers last week saw those border measures extended. It has since been revealed that the security guards and construction workers were linked via a bus trip that two of the positive cases shared.
However, a mass testing blitz of all people in Macau returned no more positive results – the third time such a blitz has been conducted since early August.