GGRAsia – Macau April visitor tally up 14pct y-o-y, down 4pct m-o-m

Macau April visitor tally up 14pct y-o-y, down 4pct m-o-m

May 23, 2024 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

April visitor volume to Macau was up 14.4 percent year-on-year, at just over 2.60 million, representing 75.8 percent of the tally in the same month in the pre-pandemic trading year of 2019, according to information from the city’s Statistics and Census Service.

But judged month-on-month, April 2024’s visitor aggregate was down 4.4 percent on the just over 2.72 million registered for March. The latter month included the Easter holiday season, observed in Hong Kong, Macau’s second-largest tourist source market after mainland China.

April’s sequential decline in visitors was despite the Ching Ming holiday period observed on the Chinese mainland from April 4 to April 6 this year.

April this time had also seen the city’s casino gross gaming revenue fall 4.9 percent month-on-month, to just under MOP18.55 billion (US$2.31 billion), according to data released earlier by the city’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.

During April, same-day visitors – amounting to nearly 1.35 million of the total – and overnight visitors, tallying 1.25 million, showed respective segmental growth of 23.0 percent and 6.3 percent year-on-year.

Overseas visitors – a key target market currently for the city’s government – represented 8.0 percent of the April aggregate, supplying 208,297 arrivals. The overseas component was up 91.9 percent year-on-year, and represented 68.6 percent of the figure in the same month of 2019.

The biggest single overseas contributor was South Korea, with 37,493, or 60.9 percent of April 2019. Second was the Philippines, with 35,851 arrivals, equal to 86.6 percent of April 2019.

In the main feeder market, mainland China, the April volume was up 25.3 percent year-on-year to nearly 1.74 million. Those travelling on Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) exit visas amounted to 793,351, a decrease of 3.0 percent.

China’s State Council added this month eight more mainland cities to the list of places where people can apply for IVS exit visas to travel to Macau. The change takes effect from May 27.

Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area amounted to 792,949, up 28.6 percent year-on-year.

April arrivals from Hong Kong (581,646) dropped by 22.0 percent year-on-year, while those from Taiwan (73,460) grew by 120.6 percent.

The numbers of visitors from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan returned to respectively 74.2 percent, 83.5 percent and 80.0 percent of the corresponding levels in the same month of 2019.