Macau appears to be well and truly back on the Chinese tourism radar with official figures released by the government’s Statistics and Census Service showing the number of visitors from mainland China in March 2017 jumped 11.5% year-on-year, including an 18.4% rise in those using the Individual Visit Scheme.
Total visitor numbers for March were up 5.7% compared to the same month in 2016, while the number of overnight visitors climbed 13.9% to 1.34 million. Visitation for the first quarter was up 5.6% to 7.87 million, from 7.46 million last year.
Mainland Chinese visitors accounted for 66.2% of arrivals, ahead of Hong Kong with 19.7%. Korea comprised 2.6% of visitors but saw a massive 56.9% year-on-year increase in the number of people travelling to Macau.
With the majority of visitors coming from China, border gate crossings continue to be the favoured mode of arrival although the number of visitors arriving by plane enjoyed the highest percentage jump, up 18.6% from 175,000 in 2016 to 205,000 this year.
