GGRAsia – Surge in HK visitors to Macau continues in April

Surge in HK visitors to Macau continues in April

May 18, 2023 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

Macau welcomed more than 2.27 million visitors in April, an increase of 16.2 percent month-on-month, and up 274.7 percent from a year ago. Of that total, nearly 61 percent – or 1.39 million – came from the Chinese mainland, according to a Thursday update by the Statistics and Census Service.

Mainland China remains the most significant feeder source market for Macau’s hospitality and casino gaming industries. The 1.39-million mainland arrivals rose 159.3 percent year-on-year, and were up about 12.0 percent sequentially.

Among the mainland cohort, 817,730 entered Macau on Individual Visit Scheme visas.

A total of 27.1 percent of mainland visitors – or 616,602 – were drawn from nine cities in Guangdong province that help make up the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area.

Of the April visitor tally, those that came from Hong Kong increased by 1,039.0 percent year-on-year, to 745,282. The figure represented a sequential growth of 19.8 percent.

April had several public holidays in Hong Kong and mainland China. On the mainland, the designated public holiday during the month included Ching Ming Festival on April 5, and two days of the Labour Day break that fell on April 29 and April 30.

For Hong Kong, the April holidays were the Ching Ming Festival on April 5, and the Easter breaks that covered April 7 to 10.

In April, visitors from overseas accounted for just under 5.0 percent of the overall visitor tally. Of these, most were from the Philippines (29,599), Indonesia (14,792) and South Korea (8,095), showed the data.

Overnight visitors to the city stood at nearly 1.18 million, accounting for about half of the overall visitor tally. In April, the average length of stay of visitors stayed at 1.2 days. The duration of stay for overnight visitors was 2.2 days, while the average for same-day visitors was 0.3 of a day.

Macau’s overall visitor arrivals in the first four months of 2023 stood at 7.22 million, up 190.8 percent from the prior-year period. The number represents about 52 percent of the corresponding period in 2019, the last trading year before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.