Macau International Airport handled just over 3.89 million passenger journeys during the first half this year, up 7.9 percent year-on-year, show the latest data from the facility’s operator.
The growth was led by passenger business in the first four months of this year. By comparison, May saw passenger volume – travellers arriving and departing – down by 0.4 percent year-on-year, with a 9.3 percent fall in June, show the figures from Macau International Airport Co Ltd.
Chinese-language newspaper the Macao Daily News – citing unnamed tourism-sector sources – reported that the May and June trend might be attributable to ticket price rises, with airlines facing higher aviation-fuel bills starting from late March to early April amid conflict in the Middle East.
The FIFA World Cup 2026, an international football tournament held from June 11 to July 19, might also have been a factor in reducing consumer demand for trips to Macau, the news outlet also reported, citing tourism industry sources.
Stabilisation of jet fuel costs could help improve air-travel demand for the remainder of this year, the report added, citing its tourism-trade sources.
Separately, official data from Macau’s Statistics and Census Service show the city’s airport handled 1.56 million visitor arrivals in the first half of this year, a figure up 7.1 percent year-on-year. Such direct arrivals by air accounted for 7.4 percent of the city’s circa 20.94-million inbound travellers in the January to June period.
The volume of visitor-arrivals -only, via the Macau airport saw year-on-year growth in the first four months of this year, followed by a decline of 3.9 percent in May, and a decline of 11.9 percent in June, per the statistics service.
The Chinese mainland, the top source of Macau International Airport’s visitor arrivals, generated 957,982 entries in the first half of this year, up 1.0 percent year-on-year, according to the statistics bureau. International arrivals via the Macau air hub in the first-half – i.e., people from outside the Greater China region – tallied 292,426, up 15.9 percent from a year ago.
