December 2023 brought more visitors but shorter stays

Official statistics released by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) show that last month accounted for a significant number of visitors (almost 3 million) but also that the duration of the stays of these visitors in Macau has been shrinking by almost half.

According to the release, visitor arrivals totaled 2,943,930 in December 2023, a figure that is naturally much higher than the one recorded in 2022 (656%) but more significantly is just 4.52% below the figure reached in 2019 (pre-pandemic) when the total number of visitors in December reached 3,083,406.

December 2023 also represented a month-on-month increase of 13.9% when compared with November, which is traditionally a stronger month of visitation.

Although more visitors were arriving in Macau last month, the statistics release also shows that the duration of the stays of these visitors has been shortening, with the average length of stay of visitors dropping by 0.9-day year-on-year to a total of 1.2 days.

This figure roughly means that the length of stays dropped year-on-year some 42.86%.

According to DSEC, this drop is almost totally attributed to the overnight visitors, whose duration of stay decreased by 1.4 days for a total of 2.2 days. Meanwhile, that for same-day visitors (0.2 days) remained steady.

When compared year-on-year with December 2019, the duration of trips of overnight stayers shows a slight drop (from 2.3 to 2.2 days), while the same-day visitors continued steadily at 0.2 days.

In terms of proportion, December 2023 saw the number of same-day visitors top those staying overnight by just by a slim margin, at 50.47% and 49.53% respectively.

As regards the source of visitors, the number of visitors from the mainland totaled 1,962,223 (66,65%) in December, with those traveling under the Individual Visit Scheme totaling 1,060,216.

Visitors from the nine cities within the Greater Bay Area were more than one-third of all visitors to Macau, with 27% of those arriving from Zhuhai (273,974) and another 21.9% from Guangzhou (222,218).

The number of visitors from the neighboring regions of Hong Kong totaled 686,441 (23.32% of the total) and international visitors (238,611) accounted for 8.11% of all visitors during this month.

The same figure for international visitors also shows that year-on-year, when compared to 2019, such visitors have recovered by 94% (from 253,753 in December 2019).

Over the entirety of 2023, the busiest border post continued to be Border Gate, which was the port of entry for 47% (10,516,603) of all those arriving to Macau. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge accounted for 33.6% (7,519,072) of all arrivals, while 14% (3,127,469) entered the region via the Hengqin port.