Gov’t tourism campaign gaining ground: 1.96m arrivals for March
The city has seen nearly 1.96 million tourist arrivals in March as the city ramped up its tourism promotions to visitors from the mainland and the international market.
Data from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) shows that the figure represents an upsurge of 271.4% year-on-year and a rise of 22.8% month-on-month.
Overnight visitors (979,152) and same-day visitors (977,715) soared by 522.7% and 164.5% year-on-year respectively.
As to the source of visitors, the number of visitors from mainland China grew by 164.9% year-on-year to 1.24 million.
Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area increased by 79.0% year-on-year to 563,083, of whom 27.9% came from Zhuhai (157,032) and 21.0% from Guangzhou (118,361). As well, visitors from Hong Kong (622,304) and Taiwan (26,645) rocketed by 1,077.2% and 447.5% year-on-year respectively.
Analyzed by checkpoint, the number of visitor arrivals by land hiked by 208.1% year-on-year to 1.56 million in March; among them, 44.7% arrived through the checkpoint of Border Gate (696,962), 40.2% came via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (626,518) and 10.7% via the Hengqin port (166,262).
Earlier this month, the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) has put forth a promotional campaign with Air Macau to entice foreign tourists to visit the city after years of travel restrictions. From now until June 30, tourists can enjoy a limited-time ‘Buy One Get One Free’ offer when they purchase a round-trip ticket from Air Macau, departing from Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Thailand or Vietnam with Macau as the destination.
Meanwhile, the analysts at Morgan Stanley have forecast that occupancy rates during the May Day Golden Week will exceed those recorded during the Lunar New Year.
However, the current labor shortages remain a problem, where many hotels are forced to require their staff to work overtime to accommodate the influx of tourists while they wait for quotas for non-resident workers.
Therefore, many hotels have no option but to make some rooms unavailable.
According to Morgan Stanley, “17 out of 25 hotels surveyed have three or more days (out of 10 surveyed days) fully booked.”
In the first quarter of 2023, the number of visitor arrivals expanded by 163.7% year-on-year to 4.95 million, with overnight visitors (2.64 million) and same-day visitors (2.31 million) jumping by 287.6% and 93.1% respectively. LV
