The number of visitor arrivals to Macau during February fell by 5.6 percent year-on-year according to data released on Thursday by the city’s Statistics and Census Service.
The monthly tally was approximately 2.50 million. The number of same-day visitors decreased by 13.2 percent year-on-year to just over 1.26 million, while the number of overnight visitors rose by 3.6 percent to just over 1.23 million.
In the first two months of 2017, Macau’s visitor arrivals rose by 5.5 percent from the prior-year period, to nearly 5.37 million.
In February, the average length of stay of visitors was 1.2 days, up by 0.1 of a day, judged year-on-year.
During the February reporting period, the total of visitors from mainland China decreased by 7.5 percent year-on-year at nearly 1.67 million. The monthly number of mainlanders travelling under China’s Individual Visit Scheme – accounting for 889,353 arrivals in February 2017 – fell by 11.9 percent year-on-year.
February’s reporting period included several days of Chinese New Year festivities, marking a Greater China holiday season which began on January 28. The Chinese New Year is usually a period when hundreds of thousands of mainland Chinese tourists take advantage of the week-long break to travel, but most of the travelling was likely done in late January this year. In 2016, the Chinese New Year fell on February 8.
The Chinese province of Guangdong was by far the largest contributor of mainland visitors to Macau during February, providing 780,099 arrivals, or 46.8 percent of all arrivals from the mainland, said the statistics bureau.
In February the aggregate of visitors from Hong Kong dropped by 8.6 percent to 501,141, while the number from South Korea and Taiwan went up by 31.3 percent and 0.6 percent respectively.
The tally of visitors from Australia increased 2.5 percent year-on-year in February, whereas the aggregates for the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and France decreased by 2.2 percent, 6.9 percent, 9.5 percent and 3.5 percent respectively.
