About 1.46 million foreign passport holders visited Macao last year, making up 5.17 percent of total arrivals, according to Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes. She spoke to media at the airport yesterday, as Air Macau launched its first flight to Kuala Lumpur.
Senna Fernandes described the flow of foreign arrivals as “good,” given the global airline industry had yet to fully bounce back from the three-year Covid-19 pandemic.
While 2023’s total tourism influx managed to recover to 70 percent of the tally in pre-pandemic 2019, last year’s international visitors made up less than half of their 2019 total – which was about three million.
[See more: The provisional tourism numbers are in for 2023]
Senna Fernandes said MGTO aimed to attract at least three million tourists from outside Greater China this year – up from the two million given as the government’s goal back in November.
The government has set aside 235 million patacas of its 2024 budget to expand Macao’s international tourism sources, with a focus on Southeast and Northeast Asian countries.
About 100 million patacas would go towards offering discounted airfares to Macao, Senna Fernandes said.
The MGTO was also cooperating with Hong Kong-based travel agencies and cruise line operators, she said, and offering free Hong Kong-Macao bus tickets to foreign and Taiwanese passport-holders at Hong Kong’s airport during January.
