Easter holiday visitors equal CNY arrivals

The number of visitors to Macau during the Ching Ming Festival and Easter holidays reached a total of 481,765, figures released by the Public Security Police Force (PSP) show.

The figures take into account the period between April 5 (the Ching Ming holiday) and April 10 (Monday after the Easter Day).

According to the official release, the number of visitors, which has reached almost half a million, is almost equal to that obtained earlier this year during the first seven days of the Lunar New Year, known as “CNY Golden Week,” when a total of 484,505 tourists entered Macau.

Taking into account that the Easter holiday period is one day shorter than CNY, the figures show an increase in the daily average of tourists arriving in Macau, which stood at 80,294, that is, 16% higher than the average registered during CNY (69,215 visitors per day).

The day on which the largest number of tourist arrivals was recorded was on April 8 (Saturday), with a total of 93,253.

A lot of movement was also recorded among locals, as well as other non-residents, with the total number of border movements over the six days reaching 2,978,770, of which 1,215,759 (40.81%) were related to the arrivals and departures of Macau residents.

Topping the number of arrivals were visitors from the mainland (616,531), followed by Hong Kong (236,958).

Also noted was a very slight increase in the number of arrivals of visitors from other countries and regions outside greater China, which totaled 31,301 (2.07%).

Unsurprisingly, the major entry port continued to be the Border Gate with 758,781 (50.12%) crossings, followed by the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge Port 279,161 (18.44%) and Qingmao 218,133 (14.41%).

The ferry terminals of Outer Harbour and Taipa only made up 5.94% of visitor arrivals (89,994), mostly due to the few ferries in operation and current scheduling, which is still very far from the operating levels seen during pre-pandemic times.

For the first quarter of the year, Macau recorded nearly five million visitor arrivals, a third of which are from the neighboring region, Hong Kong.

Official data shows that Macau registered over 4.96 million visitor arrivals in the first quarter of 2023, which include about 1.51 million Hong Kong visitors, a nearly 10-fold surge year-on-year.