Day: February 15, 2025

Macau’s SAR Government has abolished its home confinement requirement for incoming travel as of Friday 23 December.

The health code for incoming travellers from Hong Kong, Taiwan and other foreign destinations has now been updated to a required five days of self-health management.

Alongside this, the region has now abolished the requirement for incoming tourists to take a nucleic acid test (NAT) upon entry, or three days after arriving.

However, incoming tourists are still required to provide proof of a negative NAT no more than 72 hours prior to their arrival.

In addition, as part of the region’s new self-health management guidelines, tourists must still take rapid antigen tests for each of the five days, beginning on the day after entry. All results must be uploaded to the Macau health code.

The news of these recently relaxed quarantine requirements will come as a huge boost to the region, which is due to begin its new concession period on 1 January 2023.

Recently, the region’s six current concessionaires all had their licences extended for 10 years, and they’ll be hoping this new period marks the start of renewed recovery from 2023 onwards.

The region’s new

licences were signed off by Macau’s Chief Executive Ho lat Seng, with representatives of each operator present at the formal ceremony.

Per the new contracts, Macau’s concession holders must maintain issued capital of MOP 5bn ($623.9m) throughout the duration of their licence, while a Managing Director must possess 15% of their company’s share capital and reside in Macau.

Alongside the signing of these concessions, Macau passed updated laws on a new legal framework for junkets. Long touted, these laws mean junkets can only partner with one of Macau’s concession holders, and they cannot run operations on the same property as their operating partners.

Macau visitor numbers dip slightly, especially for Mainland China and Hong Kong visitors during April, as compared to March.

Macau has seen a slight dent in tourist numbers this April, compared to last month’s. However, the yearly total is still an overall increase when compared to the same period in 2023.

According to statistics from Macau’s Public Security Police Force, the number of arriving visitors to Macau in April 2024 is up to 8.5 million, a slight drop of 3.5% when compared to March 2024’s numbers of 8.8 million.

There was a slight decrease in Mainland China visitors, Hong Kong visitors and Macau residents, with numbers at 2.7 million, 1.6 million and 390,087 respectively in March but only up to 2.6 million, 1.6 million and 347,219 respectively in April of the same year. Taiwan visitors and foreign tourists, however, saw a slight increase in numbers; from 37,971 and 105,655 in March that rose to 43,474 and 108,000 in April.

All in all, though, the total yearly quarter is still a significant increase when compared to the same time period in 2023. Visitors from January to April in 2023 amounted to 25.7 million, while the number of visitors has increased 34.37% in January to April 2024, with a sum of 34.6 million.

The Macau Government has made it clear in a recent report that it plans to

diversify into non-gaming sectors

in its effort to boost its tourism industry, one of Macau’s main revenue sources.

Travelling policies such as

the NIA’s new measures for mainland travellers

and

the 8 new cities under the FIT scheme

benefit both gaming visitors as well as non-gaming visitors and business travellers.

Macau’s gaming revenue still saw a year-on-year increase, with its latest

26% increase

in April this year, despite fluctuating tourist numbers and government plans to reduce dependency on gaming revenue.

The Chinese government has announced an end to quarantine measures for all foreign travellers from 8 January, meaning that the gambling province of Macau will no longer be subject to heavy entry restrictions.

The move marks the end of China’s zero-Covid policy, which has had a catastrophic effect on Macau’s gambling business and has seen hordes of players flock to other destinations such as The Philippines and Singapore.

2022 saw Macau closed off for large parts of the year due to Covid-19 outbreaks and decimated the casino operators’ financial intake in the province.

For November, Macau reported a gross gaming revenue (GGR) of MOP$2.99bn (US$370m), down 56% annually on 2021.

In recent months,

all six of Macau’s current concessionaires chose to extend their licences for 10 years,

displaying a large amount of faith in Macau’s future. Now, that faith appears to have paid off with the near-complete easing of all entry restrictions for foreign travellers.

Last week,

Macau’s SAR Government abolished its home confinement requirement for incoming travel as of Friday 23 December, with the health code for incoming travellers from Hong Kong, Taiwan and other foreign destinations updated to a required five days of self-health management.

However, from 8 January, China has decided to reclassify Covid as a Class B infectious disease, and the cap on incoming flights will be scrapped – while the only restriction in place for incoming people will be mandatory PCR tests.

The zero-Covid policy has ended in China following widespread demonstrations by Chinese citizens opposing lockdown measures taken by the government, as many watched other countries scrapping Covid laws and adopting a ‘living with the virus’ policy.