China’s State Council has added eight more mainland cities to the list of places where people can apply for Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) exit visas to travel to Macau and Hong Kong.
The information was confirmed on Saturday by the country’s National Immigration Administration, and takes the number of IVS-eligible places to 59, from 51 previously. The change takes effect from May 27.
The newly-added cities are all capitals either of provinces of autonomous regions, namely: Taiyuan in Shanxi Province; Hohhot in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region; Harbin in Heilongjiang Province; Lhasa in Tibet Autonomous Region; Lanzhou in Gansu Province; Xining in Qinghai Province; Yinchuan in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region; and Urumqi in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
This is the second time in fewer than three months that China’s State Council has added new cities to the list of places where people can apply for IVS exit visas to travel to Macau and Hong Kong. In late February, it was announced that the State Council had added two more mainland population centres – Xi’an and Qingdao – to the IVS list.
Analyst Vitaly Umansky of Seaport Research Partners said in a Sunday note that the latest IVS list expansion – coupled with other positive visa policy measures related to business visas, multi-entry visas, and Hengqin-Macau group visas, that were announced in late April – should have “more marginal impact on visitation and gross gaming revenue in the near term, but longer term are positive drivers for continuing to boost” visitor volumes.
He added: “The more near term impact from the pronouncements should be a boost to sentiment as the policy measures are a clear indication from the Chinese government about its continued support for Macau, and no negative association with the gaming industry.”
The IVS update news was made shortly before the start of a seven-day “inspection tour” of Macao, that begins today (May 13), by senior mainland official Xia Baolong. He is director of the Hong Kong and Macao Work Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council.
February’s announcement of the addition of Xi’an and Qingdao to the IVS list had coincided with an inspection tour of Hong Kong by Mr Xia.
In his note, Mr Umansky pointed that the “IVS expansion should help increase” the number of mainland “mid-market and higher-end visitors” to Macau as these travel largely under IVS rather than in group visas.
“However, air capacity will need to increase from these cities [newly-added to the IVS list] into Hong Kong, Guangdong, Zhuhai and Macau airports, to make a material impact” on visitor volumes, Mr Umansky said,
The IVS system was first implemented in four cities in Guangdong, the mainland province next door to Macau and Hong Kong, and expanded several times between July 2003 and January 2007. A factor in a place’s eligibility to join the IVS initiative has previously been mentioned as level of economic development.
Of Macau’s just over 19.0 million mainland visitors in 2023, a total 55.8 percent, or 10.6 million of them, came via IVS visas, according to data from the city’s Statistics and Census Service.
