Macau visitor arrival volume in January more than doubled from a year earlier, recovering to 83.5 percent from the same month of 2019, i.e., before the onset of the Covid-19.
The number of visitors stood at just above 2.86 million, a 104.7-percent increase from January 2023, showed data released on Friday by the city’s Statistics and Census Service. This year’s January tally was down 2.8 percent month-on-month.
Overnight visitors accounted for 48.3 percent of all arrivals in January, at about 1.38 million.
The average length of stay of visitors shortened by 0.4 of a day year-on-year to 1.2 days, with that of overnight visitors standing at 2.2 days, according to the data.
Visitors from mainland China rose by 107.3 percent year-on-year to nearly 2.06 million in January, with those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) rising by 57.8 percent, to circa 1.12 million.
On Friday it was announced that China’s State Council has added two more mainland cities – Xi’an and Qingdao – to the list of places where people can apply for IVS exit visas to travel to Macau and Hong Kong.
The change takes effect from March 6, and takes the number of IVS-eligible places to 51, from 49 previously.
In January, the number of visitors from Hong Kong increased by 53.0 percent year-on-year, to 546,277. It represented about 102.3 percent of the levels recorded in January of 2019.
International visitors – from places excluding mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan – totalled 199,278 in January this year, about 66.4 percent of the figure recorded in the same month of 2019.
