Easter-Ching Ming overlap pushes Macau arrivals to near 670k
Macau recorded nearly 666,000 inbound arrivals across the five-day Easter and Ching Ming holiday period from 3 to 7 April, according to data released by the Public Security Police Force (PSPF), with the peak falling on Ching Ming Festival itself when more than 172,000 travellers crossed into the territory in a single day.
The two public holidays coincided this year for the first time in several years, creating an extended break that ran from Good Friday through two compensatory rest days on 6 and 7 April. Macau’s official holiday calendar treated the period as a single consecutive long weekend, which tourism operators and border authorities had anticipated would concentrate inbound traffic across fewer, denser days rather than spread it over a longer window.
Land borders carry the load
Most of the passengers arrived via the land border gates, just like Macau. Inbound passengers were mostly accommodated by the Border Gate of Portas do Cerco, Hengqin Port, and the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge. These figures are in line with the past trend where most inbound passengers arrive through land crossings, representing around 82% of the total. The rest of the passengers entered via sea and air transportation modes, making up 10% and 8%, respectively. Macau has also recorded a strong influx of visitors for the Chinese New Year.
Hengqin Port has shown particularly strong year-on-year growth in recent periods, with April 2025 data from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) recording increases of more than 50 percent at that crossing compared with the prior year. That trend reflects the growing integration between Macau and the adjacent Hengqin Cooperation Zone, where residential and commercial development has accelerated steadily.
The 5 April figure of 172,057 arrivals was the single highest daily count of the holiday window and coincided with the Ching Ming Festival, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, when mainland Chinese families traditionally travel to pay respects at ancestral graves. Macau, with its accessible position between Guangdong province and Hong Kong, sees elevated inbound volumes on that date each year.
Operators in a steady market
The festive season marks another period for the six casinos of Macau, namely SJM Holdings, Galaxy Entertainment Group, Wynn Macau, MGM China, Melco Resorts and Entertainment, and Sands China, as a chance to target the mass market. The current investment in the gambling industry focuses on revamping resorts and their facilities without constructing additional casinos or granting concessions of any kind, in addition to the current licenses of casino operators.
Visitation has continued to grow steadily, even through 2026, in the mass market, whereas numbers in VIP rooms have remained below their 2020 levels. This particular window of time is not an exception to the trend; it is part of the pattern that the market has been following since it recovered from the pandemic.
Regulatory backdrop
The Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) has maintained an active supervisory posture over the concession period, with recent advisories reinforcing customer due diligence requirements and large-transaction monitoring, particularly for VIP and junket-adjacent activity. Advertising guidelines continue to prohibit promotional material linked to high-credit VIP arrangements or loan-backed betting structures.
Macau crossed the 10 million visitor mark for 2026 ahead of the equivalent point in 2025, a milestone reported earlier this year, suggesting the full-year pace of arrivals is running slightly ahead of last year’s figures. Whether the Easter-Ching Ming period meaningfully accelerates that trajectory will become clearer once DSEC publishes its April data in the weeks ahead.
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