Macau recorded 20.94 million visitor arrivals in the first half of this year, a year-on-year increase of 9.0 per cent, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) has announced in a statement.
Same-day visitors (12.88 million) and overnight visitors (8.05 million) rose by 15.3 per cent and 0.2 per cent respectively, according to yesterday's statement.
Overnight visitors stayed for an average of 2.3 days (55 hours), unchanged from the first half of last year.
Same-day visitors accounted for 61.5 per cent of all visitors between January and June.
On average, Macau recorded 115,715 visitor arrivals per day in the first half of this year.
Visitor arrivals from the Chinese mainland rose by 11.0 per cent to 15.28 million, accounting for 72.9 per cent of total visitor arrivals.
Visitors from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (3.65 million) and China’s Taiwan region (575,895) rose by 0.3 per cent and 24.7 per cent respectively.
Foreign visitor arrivals increased by 6.0 per cent to 1.42 million, or 6.8 per cent of all visitor arrivals.
South Korean (284,258), Philippine (270,441) and Thai visitors (122,494) were Macau’s top three international visitor segments. Among them, visitors from Thailand recorded the largest year-on-year increase, at 51.4 per cent.
In June, visitor arrivals fell by 3.1 per cent year-on-year to 2.8 million.
The Central People’s Government has designated Macau a World Centre of Tourism and Leisure.
In 2000, the first full year after the establishment of the Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR) on December 20, 1999, the city recorded 9.16 million visitor arrivals.
Caption: Tourists walk along Travessa do Soriano (“Soriano Lane”) in Macau’s old quarters near Largo do Senado (“Senate Square”) yesterday. — Photo: Carl Leong
