More visitors from Guangdong than from Hong Kong visited Macau in 2012, according to official data cited by The Macau Post Daily today.
Some 7.93 million visitors arrived from Guangdong last year, down 3.2 percent year-on-year.
The number of Hong Kong visitors fell 6.6 percent to 7.08 million last year.
Guangdong visitors accounted for 46.9 percent of Macau’s total number of visitor arrivals from the mainland last year.
The neighbouring province accounted for 28.3 percent of the city’s overall number of 2012 visitor arrivals, which reached a record 28.08 million, up 0.3 percent.
Guangdong has a population of 105 million. Hong Kong has some seven million residents.
Last year saw 811,288 visitors from Fujian, 326,469 from Beijing and 505,280 from Shanghai.
The total number of visitors from the mainland rose 4.6 percent to 16.9 million, accounting for 60.2 percent of Macau’s total number of visitors last year.
The number of visitor from Taiwan fell 11.8 percent to 1.07 million.
Thailand had the highest growth rate among Macau’s major source markets last year. A total of 231,295 visitors from Thailand arrived in Macau last year, a year-on-year growth of 17.8 percent.
The number of visitors from India dropped 11.1 percent to 150,825.
The number of visitors from Japan remained almost unchanged at 395,989.
A total of 444,773 South Koreans visited Macau last year, up 11.5 percent.
Visitors from Asia accounted for 97.4 percent of all visitor arrivals.
Last year saw 306,521 visitors from North, Central and South America (-1.3 percent), 262,692 from Europe (+4.3 percent), 129,165 from Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific (+0.9 percent), and 26,990 from Africa (+8.6 percent). (macaunews)
