Macau’s visitor tally in January was down 15.4 percent month-on-month, but up 24.7 percent year-on-year, to 694,430.
January’s sequential fall from December was due to “the tightening of border-control measures between Zhuhai and Macau in January in response to the pandemic situation in the neighbouring regions,” said a Tuesday press release from Macau’s Statistics and Census Service, referring to Covid-19 infection rates.
Nonetheless, investment analysts have noted that when Chinese New Year occurs in February – as it did this time – then January demand for tourism and casino services in Macau has typically been muted, even in pre-pandemic times.
This January’s same-day visitor tally was 450,428, up by 56.5 percent year-on-year. The aggregate of overnight visitors was 244,002, down by 9.3 percent year-on-year.
The average length of stay in January was down by 0.3 of a day, judged year-on-year, to 1.3 days.
Same-day visitors as a proportion of all arrivals, increased by 13.2 percentage points, to 64.9 percent.
Length of stay for same-day visitors remained at 0.1 of a day, while length of stay for overnight visitors went up by 0.4 of a day, to 3.4 days.
In terms of source markets, the number of visitors from mainland China went up by 29.4 percent year-on-year, to 642,016, with 167,771 of them travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme.
There were 412,174 visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area. Of those, 67.1 percent came from Zhuhai. There were 44,380 visitors holding Hong Kong travel documents, and 7,896 from Taiwan.
Analysed by Macau checkpoint, the number of arrivals by land rose 21.6 percent year-on-year to 630,805 in January. Of those, 83.7 percent, or 528,066, arrived via the Border Gate. A further 10.5 percent, or 66,039, came via Hengqin port.
Visitor arrivals by air routes and by ferry services totalled 50,644, and 12,981 respectively.
