February visitors down 5.6% despite CNY arrivals

The Macau SAR saw a decrease of 5.6% month-on-month in visitor arrivals, which totaled 655,505 in February, according to data from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC). 

The Lunar New Year holiday fell partially within February, although the number of visitor arrivals nevertheless fell short of the government’s expected 20,000 daily visitors.  

Typically one of the busiest months, last month’s arrivals are still significantly up 53.5% year-on-year, albeit from a low base. 

The number of visitors from mainland China grew by 60.1% year-on-year to 609,249, with 196,523 visitors within this cohort travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme. Visitors from the nine cities in the Pearl River Delta in the Greater Bay Area totalled 384,303, 59.1% of whom came from Zhuhai. There were 41,409 visitors from Hong Kong and 4,742 from Taiwan.

Macau, however, has seen visitor arrivals’ rise following the Lunar New Year holidays with up to 28,000 arrivals on a single day. 

The Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) had previously noted that the region saw more overnight visitors, which is believed to provide a boost to all sectors.

Same-day visitors (376,033) and overnight visitors (279,472) increased by 106.8% and 13.9% year-on-year respectively. Meanwhile, the average length of stay of visitors shortened by 0.4 days year-on-year to 1.5 days, on account of an uplift in the proportion of same-day visitors. The duration of stay for same-day visitors remained at 0.1 days while that of overnight visitors increased by 0.1 days to 3.3 days.

The MGTO recently launched a new promotional scheme to attract more visitors to Macau with an ongoing partnership with Macau’s flagship airline Air Macau, as well as online hotel and travel booking platforms.

Dubbed “My Treat for You, See You in Macao,” the initiative aims to attract more visitors to Macau and encourage them to stay longer in a bid to boost consumption and revive the tourism sector.

In the first two months of 2022, the number of visitor arrivals grew by 37.2% year-on-year to 1,349,935. Same-day visitors (826,461) and overnight visitors (523,474) increased by 76% and 1.8% year-on-year respectively.