Macau’s visitor tally in May was down 2.6 percent compared to April, at just over 2.21 million, said on Monday the city’s Statistics and Census Service. The period included a portion of the recent mainland China holiday sometimes known as May Golden Week.
China’s State Council had designated April 29 to May 3 inclusive as the Labour Day holiday period on the mainland.
Nonetheless, Macau’s visitor aggregate in May was up 268.5 percent compared to May 2022, a period when Covid-19 related travel restrictions were still in place.
This May, mainland visitors accounted for 66.6 percent of the total, or just over 1.47 million arrivals. The number was up 173.8 percent from the prior-year period.
Of that cohort, nearly half were from the neighbouring mainland province of Guangdong, with 27.1 percent of the mainlanders originating from Zhuhai, next door to Macau, and 21.0 percent from Guangzhou.
Of the entire complement of May visitors, 27.2 percent, or 601,991 arrivals, were from Hong Kong. Visitors from Taiwan accounted for 1.4 percent of the monthly tally, at 31,537 arrivals.
Ricky Hoi Io Meng, deputy director at the Macao Government Tourism Office, was cited last week as saying the Macau authorities had no plans to extend beyond June a promotional scheme that has offered a free return ticket by bus or ferry for any visitor from Hong Kong that had stayed at least one night in Macau.
The official mentioned that the volume of Hong Kong-originating visitors had already reached 80 percent of pre-pandemic levels. The scheme had started in January, for an initial period of three months, and had then been extended.
In the first five months of 2023, the overall number of visitor arrivals to Macau expanded by 205.9 percent year-on-year, to just under 9.44 million, said the statistics service.
In that period the average length of stay of visitors increased year-on-year by 0.1 of a day to 1.3 days, with that of same-day visitors – standing at 0.3 of a day – rising by 0.2 of a day. Duration of stay for overnight visitors was 2.3 days, a decrease of 0.9 of a day.
