May arrivals recover to 79% of pre-Covid levels

The number of visitor arrivals in May increased by 21.6% compared to the previous year, reaching a total of 2.69 million. This represents a recovery to 79.3% of the figure recorded in May 2019. Additionally, there was a month-on-month increase of 3.5%, according to data from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).

The growth in visitor arrivals was driven by a 27.2% increase in same-day visitors (1,430,741) and a 15.9% increase in overnight visitors (1,261,450) compared to the previous year.

In terms of visitor source, mainland China experienced a year-on-year increase of 25.9% in May, with a total of 1.86 million visitors.

Among them, those traveling under the Individual Visit Scheme saw a growth of 6.3%. Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area also increased by 30.3% compared to the previous year. However, there was a 3.3% decrease in visitors from Hong Kong (582,083) and a significant surge of 118.7% in visitors from Taiwan (68,971).

The number of visitors from Hong Kong returned to the level seen in May 2019, while visitors from mainland China and Taiwan rebounded to 76.5% and 78.5% of their respective levels in the same month of 2019.

Meanwhile, international visitors recorded a substantial year-on-year increase of 74.4% in May, totaling 184,854.

This represents a recovery to 61.3% of the figure recorded in May 2019. Among the Southeast Asian markets, the number of visitors from Indonesia rose by 15.6% compared to the same month in 2019. The figures for visitors from the Philippines (35,852) and Malaysia (15,094) returned to 73.8% and 80.2% of their respective levels in May 2019.

In the South Asian markets, the number of visitors from India (13,759) reached 65.7% of the level seen in May 2019. In the Northeast Asian markets, numbers of visitors from the Republic of Korea (33,999) and Japan (9,924) recovered to 51.7% and 29.4% of the corresponding levels in the same month of 2019. 

During the initial five months of 2024, visitor arrivals increased by 50.2% compared to the previous year, reaching a total of 14.17 million visitors.

This represents a recovery to 82.4% of the visitor level observed during the same period in 2019. Lynzy Valles