Macau welcomed 3,221,691 visitor arrivals in August, its highest monthly tally since COVID and 16.7% higher than the 2,759,544 who arrived in July, according to figures from the Statistics and Census Service.
It was also 870% higher than August 2022, which was heavily impacted by the SAR’s strict COVID control measures and saw only 331,397 arrivals.
Compared with August 2019, when there were 3,623,116 arrivals, visitation recovered to 89% of pre-COVID levels.
Mainland China continued to dominate visitor numbers with a 700% year-on-year increase to 2,322,580, including arrivals from the nine cities in the Pearl River Delta region of the Greater Bay Area increasing by 500% to 1,110,651. Of those, Guangzhou contributed 242,343 arrivals and Zhuhai 238,145 arrivals, accounting for 21.8% and 21.4% of total arrivals respectively.
Visitor arrivals from Hong Kong (711,684) and Taiwan (58,104) increased by 1,870% and 1,230% respectively.
As for foreign arrivals, there were 129,323 foreign arrivals in August, with the Philippines accounting for the largest number of foreign arrivals at 26,722, followed by Korea with 22,871.
Overnight arrivals (1,653,866) and same-day arrivals (1,567,825) increased by 980% and 780% year-on-year respectively, while the average length of stay of visitors was 1.2 days, a year-on-year decrease of 1.6 days.
For the first eight months of 2023 combined there have been a total of 17,627,112 visitor arrivals into Macau, representing an increase of 360% over the previous year. The number of overnight visitor arrivals (9,067,329) and same-day arrivals (8,559,783) increased by 520% and 270% respectively while the average length of stay remained unchanged at 1.3 days.
