Macau’s visitor arrivals dropped by 4.4 percent year on year to 3.14 million last month, “mainly due to a relatively high comparison base resulting from the Chinese New Year holiday that lasted eight days in mainland China in February last year,” the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) said in a statement yesterday.
This year, the Chinese New Year (CNY) fell on January 29. Last year, it fell on February 10.
According to the statement, overnight visitors decreased by 11.7 percent year on year to 1.25 million, while same-day visitors rose by 1.1 percent to 1.88 million.
Visitors’ average length of stay remained unchanged at 1.1 days. Overnight visitors’ average length of stay also remained unchanged, at 2.2 days.
Mainland Chinese visitors dropped by 6.4 percent to 2.29 million, or 72.8 percent of the total number of visitor arrivals. Hong Kong visitors fell by 4.7 percent to 579,843, or 18.4 percent.
Foreign visitors rose by 17.9 percent to 207,728 in February, or 6.6 percent of the total. Most international visitors were from South Korea (59,330), up 41.8 percent, and the Philippines (38,847), down 2.5 percent.
Meanwhile, in the first two months of the year, the number of visitor arrivals rose by 10.4 per cent to 6.79 million.
Visitors gather outside S. Domingos Church in the city centre early last month. – Photo: Rui Pastorin
