Macau’s visitor arrivals increased by 11.1 percent year-on-year to 9.86 million in the first quarter of this year, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) announced in a statement yesterday.
According to DSEC data, this was Macau’s second highest first-quarter visitor arrival figure. Only the first quarter of 2019 recorded higher, at 10.3 million visitor arrivals.
Same-day visitors (5.8 million) rose by 21.5 percent year-on-year while overnight visitors (4.0 million) dropped by 1.1 percent.
Meanwhile, visitors’ average length of stay decreased by 0.1 day year-on-year to 1.1 days, due to the growth in the proportion of same-day visitors in the total number of visitors. The duration of stay for same-day visitors (0.2 day) went down by 0.1 day year-on-year, while that for overnight visitors (2.2 days) remained unchanged.
As regards visitor sources, those from the mainland increased by 14.5 percent year-on-year to 7.2 million in the first quarter, with those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme (4.0 million) rising by 15.6 percent.
Mainlanders accounted for 73.0 percent of the total number of visitor arrivals in the first three months of the year.
Among the mainland visitors, 381,172 travelled under the “one trip per week measure”, 97,957 under the “multiple-entry measure” and 28,671 under the “tourist group multi-entry measure”.
Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) rose by 18.8 percent year-on-year to 3.58 million, driven by an upsurge of 50.3 percent in the number of visitors from Zhuhai. Visitors from China’s Taiwan region (221,146) went up by 21.6 percent year-on-year, while those from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (1.75 million) decreased by 3.6 percent.
Foreigners account for 6.9 pct of all visitors
Foreign visitors totalled 682,442 in the first quarter, up by 16.9 percent year-on-year. Foreign nationals accounted for 6.9 percent of the total number of visitor arrivals in the first quarter. Regarding the Southeast Asian markets, visitors from the Philippines (126,559), Indonesia (53,643), Malaysia (47,094) and Singapore (26,356) rose by 10.4 percent, 36.5 percent, 18.2 percent and 2.8 percent year-on-year respectively, while those from Thailand (35,073) decreased by 9.2 percent. With respect to the South Asian markets, visitors from India (19,135) dropped by 3.4 percent year-on-year. For the Northeast Asian markets, visitors from South Korea (172,255) and Japan (44,663) grew by 33 percent and 23.6 percent respectively. As regards long-haul markets, visitors from the US (36,629) went up by 9.7 percent year-on-year.
The number of visitor arrivals by land (8.1 million, or 82.1 percent of total number of visitor arrivals) grew by 15.4 percent year-on-year in the first quarter. Visitor arrivals by air (743,014) increased by 0.9 percent year-on-year, while those by sea (1.02 million) dropped by 8.9 percent.
Last month, the number of visitor arrivals totalled 3.06 million, up by 12.8 percent year-on-year.
Visitors from South Korea pose in front of the Largo do Senado fountain on Tuesday. – Photo: Rui Pastorin
