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Mercedes Hutton
Mercedes Hutton

Destinations known | Macau has conquered Covid-19, when will the Chinese tourists return?

  • The city, which recorded a mere 46 cases and zero deaths, has reopened its doors to mainland Chinese gamblers
  • Although tourist interest ‘skyrocketed’, the casinos and hotels remain largely empty and ‘golden week’ isn’t looking too golden

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Why you can trust SCMP
Macau tourist hot spot the ruins of St Paul’s, eerily quiet in February. Photo: SCMP / Winson Wong
Mercedes Hutton
Among the media narratives to emerge from the early days of the coronavirus pandemic was the one about how much better Asia had been at stemming its spread than the West. In March, BBC News wondered “What could the West learn from Asia?” when it came to the Covid-19 crisis, while The Guardian newspaper mused about how Asian coun­tries had “acted while the West dithered”.
Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan were hailed for having kept cases low despite their proximity to mainland China. Over­looked in all of this was plucky little Macau, equally close to the original epicentre of the virus but with even fewer infections and no deaths. To date, our Special Administrative Region sibling has recorded just 46 cases, all of whom have recovered.

Most Macau coverage focused on how much money it was losing from closed borders and closed casinos. Sure, when the slot machines went silent in the world’s gambling capital for 15 days in February it was a serious business – according to casino industry website GGRAsia, Macau’s gaming revenue declined 81.6 per cent year on year in the first eight months of 2020 – but the city’s swift action ensured not only that no one died from Covid-19, but also that it could begin to resume some semblance of normality ahead of many of us.

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And first on the agenda was the readmittance of tourists from the mainland.

A gondolier in the almost deserted shopping arcade at The Venetian Macao, in February. Photo: SCMP / Nora Tam
A gondolier in the almost deserted shopping arcade at The Venetian Macao, in February. Photo: SCMP / Nora Tam
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Sensibly, the city started small, welcoming at first only applications for individual visit scheme (IVS) visas from neighbouring Zhuhai, in August, before extending the arrangement to the whole of Guangdong province later that month. On September 23, IVS applications went nationwide, just in time for China’s “Golden Week” holiday, from October 1 to 8.

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