Macau drew more than 1.87 million visitors between 25 September and 7 October, a 13-day stretch covering the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday. Daily arrivals averaged 163,000, above the Macao Government Tourism Office forecast of 150,000.
Li Yang said on 25 September that having only three working days between the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day encouraged many travellers to combine leave into an extended 13-day break, shifting travel patterns and boosting overall mobility across the country. That overlap turned the two holidays into one long travel window for people entering Macau.
Li Yang and the 13-day break
Li, the Vice-Minister of Transport, set out the travel pattern before the holiday period began. His explanation fits the numbers that followed: the holiday frame produced higher average arrivals than the tourism office expected, with the daily pace landing 13,000 above forecast.
The 13-day total also helps define what crossed the border system, not just how many people arrived. Border checkpoints across Macau recorded more than 9.3 million total crossings over the same period, a much larger figure because the count tracks movements rather than unique visitors.
mainland China and Hong Kong traffic
Most of the early traffic came from mainland China. More than 797,500 visitors originated there in the first five days, while about 85,700 visitors came from Hong Kong over the same span.
That mix shows why the holiday surge was strong but not evenly distributed. Macau’s arrivals beat the tourism office forecast, yet the early flow was concentrated in mainland China rather than spread across a broad set of origins.
Golden Week movement totals
Across the full 13 days, 5.32 million border movements involved mainland Chinese residents. The scale is consistent with the broader holiday frame, which sat inside the Mid-Autumn, National Day break and coincided with nationwide expectations of nearly 2.8 billion passenger trips.
Hong Kong also logged heavy movement during the period, with 1.3 million mainland visitors arriving in the first six days of the National Day Golden Week, an 11.6 per cent increase from the corresponding period in 2025. For Macau, the immediate read is straightforward: demand ran above forecast, and the heaviest pressure fell on border links serving mainland China and Hong Kong.
The practical question now is whether the higher arrivals translate into a longer spending lift or remain a holiday spike. The numbers show Macau can absorb a large surge over a short window; what follows will depend on whether that traffic settles into repeat travel after the break ends.
