By the end of this year, the number of visitors having walked the streets and shops of Macau will have increased by more than 7% over last year’s amount. This is the forecast of Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, the head of the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO).

Fernandes indicated during a public event yesterday that Macau is expecting an aggregate visitor total for the year of around 35 million, an uptick of 7.4% over visitation from 2017. Last year, there were just over 32.6 million tourists, which represented an increase of 5.4% year-on-year.

For the first nine months of the year, visitor arrivals had increased by 8.3% over the same period last year and totaled 25.81 million. The majority came from the Chinese mainland, which comprised 70.6% of the aggregate total. There were 18.22 million mainlanders, an increase of 13.3% over the 2017 numbers.

Despite the increase, however, investment analysts point out that there may not be a correlation between an increase in visitation to the gambling mecca and an increase in casino spending. Analysts have previously stated that high-stakes gambling action involves a small group of visitors and this group controls a significant portion of the market.