In Macau, this year’s edition of the ‘Golden Week’ public holiday as well as the subsequent opening of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge reportedly helped the city to record a 9.2% increase year-on-year in October visitor numbers to 3.15 million.

Significant month-on-month boost:

According to a report from GGRAsia citing official information from the enclave’s Statistics and Census Service, this final tally countered earlier suggestions that the 31-day period could well disappoint as it represented a 23.2% boost when compared with the 2.56 million seen for the entirety of September.

New bridge proves popular:

GGRAsia reported that October had witnessed some 71,640 tourists use the newly-opened Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge in order to travel the 34 miles from Hong Kong to Macau. In addition, it cited the Macao Government Tourism Office in detailing that over 890,000 foreign visitors had entered the former Portuguese enclave during the month’s seven-day ‘Golden Week’ period, which represented a year-on-year swell of 7.2%.

Chinese importance:

Moreover, October saw the number of visitors from mainland China entering Macau rise by 12.1% year-on-year to around 2.31 million while the tally for those that had utilized the large nation’s Individual Visit Scheme improved by 15.2% to reach about 1.11 million.

However, GGRAsia reported that October saw Macau record year-on-year decreases in the number of visitors entering its territory from the important markets of Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines although the monthly figure for those from Hong Kong advanced by 9.3% to hit 509,369.

Ten-month tally rallies:

For the ten months since the start of 2018, Macau reportedly saw visitor arrivals rise by 8.4% year-on-year to stand at 28.97 million with the source further detailing that those from mainland China had accounted for almost 71% of this total at 20.53 million, which represented a boost of 13.1%.

Gaming revenues mushroom:

Finally, it reported that all of this helped Macau to record a 2.6% increase in October aggregated gross gaming revenues to almost $3.38 billion, which represented the second-highest tally since the same month four years ago when the final figure had topped $3.47 billion.