Macau’s number of visitor arrivals dropped by 5.6 percent year-on-year and 13.2 percent month-on-month to 2.49 million in February, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) announced on Thursday.
The first week of February included the last days of the weeklong Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday. This year, CNY fell on January 28.
The number of same-day visitors decreased by 13.2 percent year-on-year to 1.26 million last month, while overnight visitors rose by 3.6 percent to 1.23 million. Visitors’ average length of stay was 1.2 days. Overnight visitors’ average stay remained unchanged at 2.2 days.
Visitors from the mainland fell by 7.5 percent to 1.66 million. Some 53 percent of the mainland visitors travelled under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS). Guangdong residents accounted for some 47 percent of all mainland visitor arrivals.
The number of Hong Kong visitors fell by 8.6 percent to 501,141. South Koreans and Japanese showed the biggest increase rates of any major visitor segments.
The number of South Koreans visitors rose by 31.3 percent to 82,764, while the number of Japanese visitors increased by 29.5 percent to 27,100.
South Koreans were the fourth biggest visitor segment last month, after visitors from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In the first two months, the number of visitor arrivals rose by 5.5 percent to 5.37 million.
(Macau News/ The Macau Post Daily)
