Macau’s first-half tally of visitors from the neighbouring Chinese-mainland province Guangdong rose 17.3 percent year-on-year. But growth from feeder markets elsewhere on the mainland was a more-modest 2.5 percent.
That is according to GGRAsia’s review of public data, following the release of official visitor-volume and visitor-segment information for the six months to June 30, by Macau’s Statistics and Census Service.
First-half visitor arrivals from Guangdong tallied nearly 9.29 million, or 60.8 percent of the overall 15.29- million mainland visitors that came to Macau in the period.
Mainland visitors overall, were 73.0 percent of the 20.94-million total tourist arrivals to Macau from all markets in the first half, and were up 11.0-percent year-on-year.
But when the non-Guangdong cohort is analysed separately, they contributed just under 6.0 million in the first six months of this year, an increase of 2.5 percent year-on-year. That non-Guangdong cohort has also recovered at a slower pace than the Guangdong one, with the non-Guangdong component being in numbers terms, only 72.4 percent of the same period in the pre-pandemic year of 2019. That year, the city had received 8.29 million mainlanders from places outside Guangdong province.
The number of first-half 2026 visitors from Guangdong itself, is 54.1 percent higher than the equivalent period in 2019.
For the six months to June 30, the top-three mainland source markets outside Guangdong were: the city of Shanghai (460,428); the province of Zhejiang (453,431); and the province of Jiangsu (429,252). Those three places, located on China’s central eastern coast, have been Macau’s largest mainland-tourist source markets outside Guangdong since 2023.
The first-half tally from Shanghai was up 3.9 percent year-on-year, and that from Jiangsu province was up 5.7 percent. But the number of visitors from Zhejiang province fell 1.2 percent year-on-year.
