Macau recorded just over 3.29 million visitor arrivals in February, with nearly 1.4 million of those just in the eight days of the mainland’s Chinese New Year holiday. February’s tally was 92.9 percent of the same month in 2019 – a pre-pandemic trading year – when lunar new year festivities were also marked in February.
Total February 2024 arrivals were up 106.7 percent year-on-year. Same-day visitors amounted to circa 1.87 million, or 56.7 percent of the total. The remaining circa 1.43 million were overnighters, according to data released on Wednesday by Macau’s Statistics and Census Service.
The Chinese New Year holiday – often referred to by the gaming and hospitality sector as one of the ‘Golden Weeks’ in the city’s annual calendar – started on February 10 this year, versus January 22 in 2023, and February 5 in 2019.
The year-on-year growth of Macau’s same visitors in February this time was 148.9 percent, versus 69.1 percent for overnight visitors, the census service data show.
The average length of stay of all visitors in February was 1.1 days, representing a slight decrease of 0.2 of a day year-on-year. That was mainly due to Macau having a higher proportion of same-day visitors during the reporting month, the census service remarked.
The average stay length of overnighters in February was 2.2 days. The top three source markets for these travellers were in ‘Greater China’, namely mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Of the 3.29 million visitor arrivals Macau received in February, nearly 2.45 million – or 74.4 percent – were from mainland China. Guangdong province (1.24 million), Zhejiang province (129,884), Jiangsu province (105,145) and Shanghai city (103,085) ranked as the most important mainland feeder markets.
There were 176,192 overseas visitors in February, 5.3 percent of the total. The top three source markets for such arrivals were: South Korea (41,844), the Philippines (39,837) and Indonesia (12,471).
Macau’s aggregate visitor arrivals for the first two months of this year were 6.16 million, up 105.8 percent year-on-year. The tally represented 88.3 percent of the same period in 2019, when Macau had 6.97 million arrivals.
