The number of same-day visitors in Macao rose by 21.5 percent in the first quarter, when compared with the year prior – coming in at 5.82 million, the latest figures show. These drove a year-on-year increase of 11.1 percent in visitor arrivals, with the total amounting to 9.86 million across the three-month period.
The number of overnight visitors, totalling 4.04 million, dropped by 1.1 percent year-on-year. Visitors’ average length of stay also decreased, by 0.1 days year-on-year, to 1.1 days.
As usual, the vast majority of Macao’s arrivals were domestic travellers. Visitors from mainland China increased 14.5 percent year-on-year to 7.21 million in the first quarter.
Visitors from the nine Guangdong cities in the Greater Bay Area rose by 18.8 percent year-on-year to 3.58 million. That was driven by an upsurge of 50.3 percent in the number of visitors from the neighbouring city of Zhuhai, who are now able to visit Macao once per week for up to 7 days, thanks to new multiple-entry permits.
[See more: Macao is welcoming more visitors, but they’re spending less, local economist warns]
Visitors from Taiwan (221,000) went up by 21.6 percent year-on-year, while those from Hong Kong (1.75 million) decreased by 3.6 percent.
The number of international visitors in the first three months of 2025 rose by 16.9 percent year-on-year, to 682,000. The biggest growth spurts were from Indonesians (36.5 percent), South Koreans (33 percent) and the Japanese (23.6 percent). South Korea was also the biggest foreign source of visitors, at 172,000 arrivals.
More than 80 percent of travellers entered the SAR via land crossings, with the Border Gate and Hengqin Port each experiencing growth of more than 20 percent year-on-year for the period. The number of air arrivals remained flat, while the number of people arriving by ferry dropped by 8.9 percent.
For the month of March, the number of arrivals rose by nearly 13 percent year-on-year to 3.07 million.
