The Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) announced Thursday the preliminary visitor arrival figures for the first quarter of 2024, with about 8.9 million arrivals between 1 January and 31 March. Of these, 585,000 or around 6.6% were international arrivals, while the total tally of arrivals represented 84.8% of the daily average for the same period in 2019.
According to the data, visitor arrivals in 1Q24 were dominated by mainland China which contributed about 6.3 million arrivals, followed by Hong Kong with 1.8 million and Taiwan with 182,000.
Of the mainland arrivals, there were 47,000 from Xi’an and 24,000 from Qingdao, the two cities that were opened to the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) on 6 March this year, representing 6.4% and 44.5% annual increases respectively.
In terms of international visitor sources, the daily average of around 6,424 was up more than 300% compared to the first quarter of 2023 and reaching 67.5% of the daily average for the same period in 2019.
Of Macau’s top 10 international source markets, the main source of visitors came from the Southeast Asian markets, including the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and India. Visitors from Northeast Asia were primarily from Korea and Japan.
