First half up 15% year-on-year despite June’s low results

In the first half of 2025, Macau recorded 19,218,540 visitor arrivals, an increase of 14.9% year over year, according to data from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicates that

Still, as was the case last year, June recorded the lowest results of the first half of the year, with a month-on-month drop of 14.27% compared to May and almost 21% below the figure of 3.65 million visitors recorded in January.

The monthly visitor count in the year’s first six months surpassed 3.2 million on average.

DSEC’s analysis of the figures also noted a significant surge in same-day visitors (11,182,913), which rose by 25.8% year over year. In contrast, the number of overnight visitors (8,035,627) also increased, but by just 2.6%.

The cumulative average length of visitors’ stay decreased by 0.1 day year-over-year to 1.1 days due to the growth in the number of same-day visitors.

The average duration of stay for same-day visitors (0.2 days) and overnight visitors (2.3 days) remained unchanged year over year.

Unsurprisingly, the large majority of visitors continue to arrive from the mainland, and their share has further increased.

Mainland Chinese visitors totaled 13,767,810 (71.64%), an increase of 19.3% year over year. Of these, those traveling under the Individual Visit Scheme (7,412,318) rose even more by 24.6%.

Some 867,492 traveled under the “one trip per week measure,” and 241,257 under the “multiple-entry measure.” Only 72,149 were recorded as having entered Macau under the “tourist group multi-entry measure.”

In addition, visitors from the nine cities in the Greater Bay Area rose by 25.7% year-over-year to 7,016,216, driven by an upsurge of 57% in the number of visitors from Zhuhai.

Visitors from Hong Kong (3,647,321) and Taiwan (461,735) increased by 1.1% and 14%, respectively, year over year.

International visitors follow the trend

International visitors in the first half have followed a similar trend as the general visitors, recording an increase of 14.8% to 1,341,674.

In terms of market sources, South Korea continues to lead the international visitors ranking (282,151), followed closely by the Philippines (273,715) and Indonesia (104,608).

The Southeast Asian markets continue to have a greater representation among international visitors, with Malaysia (90,259) and Thailand (80,932) completing the top five list of countries supplying more visitors to Macau.

Among these markets, the ones that grew the most were South Korea (+21.7%), the Philippines (+16.8%), and Indonesia (+13.8%).

Japan was outside the top five but recorded the most significant growth in international markets. In the first half, the Northeast Asian country contributed 76,435 visitors, an increase of 23.5% year over year.

Regarding long-haul markets, visitors from the USA (76,457) continue to top the list. These visitors also grew by 9.9% in the first half of this year compared to 2024.

More visitors through hengqin Port

Considering the leap in visitors from Zhuhai, it is no surprise that the busiest border checkpoints were the Border Gate and Hengqin Port.

Still, the exponential increase in visitors to Macau via the Hengqin Port, which recorded a 40.6% increase year over year, is noteworthy.

In contrast, visitor arrivals by sea and air declined, with the first dropping by 5.2% to 1,978,499 and the second dropping by 4.1% to 1,459,917.