Record Golden Week: Macau Draws 1.14 Million Visitors in Seven Days as Casinos Wait for the Revenue to Follow

Macau recorded 1.143 million visitor arrivals over the seven days of the mainland's National Day holiday, October 1 to 7, 2026, with a single-day peak of 210,000 on October 4 and an average of 163,000 a day, both the highest ever recorded for the holiday, the Macao Government Tourism Office said on October 8. The crowds arrived one week after the territory's casinos posted their fourth straight month of falling revenue.

A Holiday of Records

The October Golden Week is the second of the two mainland holidays that matter most to Macau, after Chinese New Year, and in 2026 it set the marks that matter. The Tourism Office's preliminary count, based on the Public Security Police Force's border data, put total arrivals at 1.143 million for the seven days. The daily average of 163,000 was 15.5% higher than during the 2025 holiday, and the peak day, Sunday October 4, brought 210,000 people across the border. The office said both the daily average and the single-day peak were the highest for a National Day holiday since official statistics began.

Mainland visitors drove the growth. They numbered 972,000 over the week, 139,000 a day, which was 19.6% more than the 116,000 daily average of the 2025 holiday. Hong Kong supplied 119,000 visitors, Taiwan 12,000 and the rest of the world 39,000. The hotels filled accordingly: occupancy averaged 91.3% across the holiday, 3.1 percentage points higher than a year earlier, and reached 97.0% on October 2. The one figure that moved the other way was price. The average room rate across hotels, apartment hotels and budget accommodation was MOP1,677, 1.7% lower than during the 2025 holiday.

Crowds Up, Revenue Down

The arrivals record lands in an awkward quarter for the casinos. On October 1, the day the holiday began, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau reported that September's gross gaming revenue was MOP18.06 billion, down 1.2% on the year and the smallest month of 2026. It was the fourth consecutive month below 2025, after June, July and August, and it left the third quarter 3.8% behind the same quarter of last year. The year as a whole is still 3.2% ahead on the strength of the first half.

Visitor numbers and gaming revenue have never moved in lockstep in Macau. The territory's revenue depends on how much is wagered, above all at the baccarat tables that have produced between 83.7% and 85.6% of games-of-fortune revenue in every quarter since 2023, and that in turn depends on the mix of visitors rather than their count. A record Golden Week of day-trippers and families can fill the hotels, as the occupancy figure shows, without filling the premium rooms where the largest baccarat bets are placed. The lower room rate hints at the same thing.

Whether the record crowds translated into a record month will be known on November 1, when the DICJ publishes October's figure. That number is the first reading on a fourth quarter that needs to fall no more than 8.7% short of last year's for 2026 to finish ahead of 2025.