The number of visitors entering Macau fell 43.6% year-on-year and 47.8% sequentially to 328,245 in October, impacted by the tightening of border measures between Macau and Zhuhai throughout the 1 October holiday week.
According to information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC), the low monthly figure compared with 581,986 arrivals in October 2020 and was 89.8% lower than the 3.2 million visitors who arrived in October 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The numbers of same-day visitors fell 20.8% year-on-year to 216,829 and overnight visitors by 63.9% to 111,416, although the average length of stay of visitors increased by 0.9 days year-on-year to 2.3 days.
Of the 300,996 visitors from mainland China, 64,097 travelled under the Individual Visit Scheme while 184,662 came from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area. Of those, 67.4% came from Zhuhai.
For the first 10 months of 2021 combined, visitor arrivals to Macau are up 32.2% compared to the same period in 2020 to 6,083,773, with 3,015,076 of them staying overnight and 3,068,697 departing on the same day.
Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau earlier this month announced a 25.8% decline in October’s gross gaming revenue compared with September to MOP$4.37 billion (US$544 million) – the lowest monthly total since September 2020.