Macau recorded just below 19.93 million visitor arrivals in the first nine months of 2023, up 356.6 percent from the prior year, showed data published on Tuesday by the city’s Statistics and Census Bureau.
In September alone, the city received 2.30 million tourists, down 28.6 percent month-on-month, but up 312.5 percent from a year earlier.
International visitor arrivals in the nine months to September 30 stood at 859,806, equivalent to 4.3 percent of aggregate arrivals in that period.
The number of visitors from the mainland in the first nine months was just below 13.37 million, accounting for 67.1 percent of total arrivals. Visitors from Hong Kong and Taiwan reached 5.36 million and 343,023, accounting, respectively, for 26.9 percent and 1.7 percent of aggregate arrivals in the period.
The Macau government has a stated policy aim of encouraging its casino concessionaires to draw more of their customers from markets beyond China.
As part of the Macau government’s tender process for new 10-year gaming concessions, bidders were asked to create plans and pledge investment on a number of issues, including bringing in more customers from overseas.
Several of the city’s concessionaires have already announced plans to establish sales offices in overseas markets, such as Japan, Singapore, Thailand, South Korea and the Philippines.
Prior to Covid-19, Macau was overwhelmingly a Chinese tourism market, with mainland China and Hong Kong accounting for 89.6 percent of Macau’s 39.4-million visitor arrivals in 2019, according to Macau government data.
