November visitors plunge 54%

Visitor arrivals suffered a plunge of 54.3% year-on-year and 36.8% month-on-month to 366,511 in November, as the neighboring region saw a rise in coronavirus cases.

Initially, November was a hopeful month for the tourism sector following the reinstatement of eVisas for mainland visitors.

The issuance of group package tours to Macau and eVisas under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) has shaped up to be a massive boost for the SAR’s gaming and tourism operators, which have been negatively affected since the pandemic began in early 2020.

However, in November, coronavirus lockdowns have been expanding across China, as the number of Covid-19 cases hit a daily record.

Overnight visitors (196,279) and same-day visitors (170,232) fell 31.7% and 66.9% year-on-year respectively, according to the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC). Meanwhile, the average length of stay of visitors extended by 0.6 days year-on-year to 1.9 days.

As regards the source of visitors, visitors from mainland China slid 56.8% year-on-year to 320,267, with 116,890 visitors travelling under the IVS.

Visitors from the nine cities in the Pearl River Delta in the Greater Bay Area totaled 184,163, 48.1% of whom came from Zhuhai. There were 38,562 visitors from Hong Kong and 5,569 from Taiwan.

Analyzed by checkpoint, the number of visitor arrivals by land fell 58.0% year-on-year to 320,130 in November.

In the first eleven months of this year, the number of visitor arrivals fell 22.9% year-on-year to 5,310,949. Same-day visitors (3,056,366) and overnight visitors (2,254,583) went down by 14.7% and 31.7% respectively. The average length of stay of visitors decreased by 0.1 days year-on-year to 1.5 days. LV