Macao visitor arrivals up by 6.5 pct in August

MACAO - Visitor arrivals to Macao increased by 6.5 percent year-on-year to 3.62 million in August 2019, with surging same-day visitors and shrinking overnight ones, the special administrative region (SAR)'s statistics department said on Monday.

The latest report from Statistics and Census Service showed that same-day visitors surged by 20.2 percent to 1.93 million while overnight visitors dropped by 5.7 percent to 1.70 million. The fall of overnight visitors in August was rarely seen in recent months.

The average length of stay of visitors held stable at 1.2 days, with that of overnight visitors (2.3 days) rising by 0.1 day and same-day visitors (0.2 day) remaining unchanged.

Visitors from Chinese mainland increased by 4.7 percent year-on-year to 2.65 million, mainly from Guangdong Province (1.30 million) and Hunan Province (109,752).

Visitors from Hong Kong SAR (666,010) and China's Taiwan region (95,239) grew by 19.7 percent and 1.2 percent respectively, whereas those from South Korea (62,731) fell by 5.0 percent.

Analyzed by way of transport, visitor arrivals by land surged by 33.7 percent year-on-year to 2.74 million in August. Among them, 1.98 million arrived through the Border Gate and 448,005 via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge.

Visitor arrivals by air rose by 18.4 percent year-on-year to 356,583, while those by sea slipped by 50.2 percent to 521,939.

In the first eight months of 2019, visitor arrivals reached 27.44 million, a growth of 18.0 percent year-on-year. Same-day visitors (14.54 million) and overnight visitors (12.90 million) increased by 31.6 percent and 5.7 percent respectively.

The average length of stay of visitors in the first eight months stayed steady at 1.2 days, with that of overnight visitors (2.2 days) and same-day visitors (0.2 day) remaining stable.

Visitors from Chinese mainland (19.53 million), South Korea (568,243), Hong Kong SAR (5.00 million) and China's Taiwan region (727,511) rose by 19.1 percent, 3.4 percent, 21.8 percent and 0.9 percent respectively.