The Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) expects up to 39 million visitors will travel to the SAR during 2025, bringing the annual tally close to pre-pandemic 2019’s 39.4 million, multiple media outlets report. Last year saw the government’s original target of 33 million visitors exceeded by almost 2 million.
MGTO director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes said her office’s “provisional estimate for this year, if the situation is optimistic” was 38 to 39 million.
She noted that new measures easing access to the city for mainland Chinese tourists should boost the number of arrivals to well above 2024’s 34.9 million, a 23.6 percent year-on-year increase (or a recovery of 88.6 percent when compared with 2019’s figure).
The new measures allow residents of Zhuhai and Hengqin – mainland jurisdictions that adjoin Macao – to apply for multiple-entry permits for the SAR. Since the start of the year, Zhuhai residents have been able to visit once per week, for up to seven days, while Hengqin residents can travel to Macao as often as they like, for up to seven days at a time.
[See more: New multiple-entry permits prove a boon for Macao’s tourism industry]
Recent data from the National Immigration Administration showed that the number of trips Zhuhai residents were making across the border had increased by more than a quarter since 1 January, when the permits became available.
Mainland Chinese are by far Macao’s biggest tourism market, accounting for 70.1 percent of the total number of visitors in 2024. People from Hong Kong represent 20.6 percent of the total while tourists from Taiwan made up 2.4 percent. Non-Chinese represented 6.9 percent of visitors entering Macao last year.
Senna Fernandes said that MGTO would continue promoting the SAR to overseas markets, running campaigns targeting travellers from the Middle East and European countries, as well as hold five large-scale international roadshows across Asian capitals – in Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta – within the first half of 2025.
Chinese New Year is the next biggest tourism drawcard on the horizon. The MGTO chief said she expected an average of 185,000 visitors per day during the holiday, which kicks off on 28 January. International visitors were expected to account for just 4.3 percent of that number, however.
