The number of people visiting Macau grew 18.7% year-on-year and 12.2% sequentially in August to 3,403,503, according to information released this week by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).
The significant uptick included a 16.3% increase in overnight visitors to 1,800,246 and 21.6% rise in same-day visitors to 1,603,257, although the average length of stay of visitors dropped by 0.1 days year-on-year to 1.2 days.
Visitors from mainland China increased by 25.3% year-on-year to 2,527,309 in August, with those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme rising by 31.0% to 1,313,144. Mainland visitors came primarily from Guangdong Province (1,092,209) and Hunan Province (128,301).
The number of visitors from Hong Kong (556,372) and Taiwan (94,123) increased 5.0% and 1.7% respectively year-on-year with those from Korea (66,052) falling by 12.6%.
The majority of the growth came via land, up 24.2% to 2,053,251 including a 23.4% increase through the border gate to 1,743,729. Visitor arrivals by sea rose 8.6% year-on-year to 1,049,062 while those by air grew 22.1% to 301,190.
August’s numbers mean the total number of visitors for the first eight months of 2018 are up 8.9% year-on-year to 23,251,990, led by a 14.2% increase in visitors from China to 16,400,886.
Overnight visitation is up 8.4% for the year to 12,204,221 and same-day visitation by 9.4% to 11,047,769.
