Macau welcomed 9.351 tourists in June, down 99.4% compared to the same month last year, according to official data, indicating that the average stay increased from 2.2 to 5.6 nights.
The data released by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicates that the Macau tourism industry recorded 1.519 million fewer tourists in June compared to the same month last year.
The number of hikers, visitors who do not stay overnight, also fell by 99.2% from 1.567 million in June 2019 to 13.200 this year.
In the first six months of the year, Macau accumulated a drop in the number of tourists of 83.7% from 9.485 million in the first half of 2019 to 1.545 million this year. The average stay of tourists in the first semester increased from 2.2 to 2.7 nights.
In recent weeks, the gaming industry in Macau has seen a gradual return of tourists to the territory after the easing of the prevention and control policies of Guangdong province, which no longer requires a 14-day quarantine for those travelling to the special administrative region. The industry, however, depends on the start of issuing of tourist visas by Beijing which is essential both for gambling as well as Macau tourism as a whole. Most tourists who entered the territory in recent days did so using business or family visas, not tourist visas. However, Beijing has not yet indicated when it will resume issuing these visas.
Macau was among the first territories to identify cases of COVID-19 before the end of January. The last, the 46th, detected on 25 June, when no new cases had been reported since 9 April, was discharged from the hospital already.
Macau has not registered any deaths related to the disease and has not identified any infections among health professionals.