Macau’s Golden Week, which marks the celebration of the anniversary of the founding of China, got off to a strong start just over a week ago. However, it didn’t hold for long, as visitor numbers quickly dropped off on the second day of the weekend.

On September 27, Macau saw 51.8% more visitors than it did on the same pre-holiday day last year. It recorded a total of 138,122 tourists that Thursday, which certainly would have been a nice surprise to all venues in the city. However, it didn’t last and Friday saw only a 1.6% increase year-on-year, with 135,853 visitors being registered. It was even worse on Saturday, which declined 12.1% year-on-year. Only 114,298 tourists paid the city a visit that day.

As usual, mainland China was the largest source of visitors. On Thursday, 116,608 mainland Chinese traveled to Macau, an increase of 70.3% over last year’s numbers. On Friday, this had dropped to an increase over last year of only 3.5% with just 111,341 heading to the city. On Saturday, Macau visits from mainland China dropped 15.2% with just 84,895 making the trek.

The good news is that the total number of tourists visiting Macau across the first six days of the holiday period increased. There were 11.8% more visitors than seen last year and a jump of 18.9% in mainland Chinese visitors. In total, 677,078 mainlanders visited the gambling Mecca during the week.