International visitors to Macao in February rose by 17.9 percent year-on-year, to 207,728, according to the latest figures from the Statistics and Census Service (known by its Portuguese DSEC). However, overall arrivals fell in the month, mainly due to the timing of the Lunar New Year holiday.
The total tally for the month – 3,147,184 visitors – was down 4.4 percent compared with February 2024, and the number of overnight visitors was down by 11.7 percent. Same day visitors rose by 1.1 percent.
Lunar New Year – traditionally a very busy time for tourism in Macao – started in January this year, while last year’s holiday fell entirely in February.
Analysed by source, visitors from mainland China decreased by 6.4 percent to 2,291,662. Visitors from the nine mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area (1,346,743) went down by 3.2 percent. Arrivals from Taiwan (67,951) rose by 14.4 percent, while those from Hong Kong (579,843) decreased by 4.7 percent.
[See more: Will Macao see 39 million visitors in 2025?]
From the Southeast Asian markets, visitors from Indonesia (14,921), Malaysia (14,480), Thailand (11,261) and Singapore (6,762) rose by 19.6 percent, 18.1 percent, 25.5 percent and 25.2 percent respectively, while those from the Philippines (38,847) decreased by 2.5 percent. Visitors from South Korea (59,330) and Japan (14,444) grew by 41.8 percent and 26.2 percent respectively.
Visitors from the US – the only long-haul market noted in the DSEC statement – stood at 10,561, up by 6.6 percent.
Analysed by checkpoint, the number of visitor arrivals by land (2,579,462), by sea (334,443) and by air (233,279) decreased by 1.5 percent, 21.8 percent and 6 percent in February.
In the first two months of 2025, a total of 6,793,745 visitor arrivals were recorded – up by 10.4 percent year-on-year. The Macao Government Tourism Office expects up to 39 million visitors will travel to the SAR during 2025, bringing the annual tally close to the 39.4 million recorded in pre-pandemic 2019.
