Tourism | Double-digit visitor growth shows signs of slowing

This year’s rapid growth in visitor arrivals decelerated markedly in August, growing just 6.5% year-on-year compared to 16.3% year-on-year in July. The slowdown follows an exceptionally strong first half of 2019, which registered over 20% growth in the number of visitors and sparked concerns of overtourism that are yet to be allayed.
The number of visitor arrivals reached 3.62 million in August 2019, according to data newly released by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC), taking the total for the first eight months of 2019 to 27.43 million visitor arrivals, or 18% more than a year earlier. This represents a slowdown from the year-to-date visitor growth of 20% seen in the first seven months of the year.
Some of the visitor growth is linked to the opening of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge in October last year, where the number of bridge-crossers has outpaced the decline in visitors arriving by ferry.
The bridge may also be facilitating a shift in the type of tourist coming to Macau. Much of the tourism growth in 2019 has been fueled by soaring numbers of same-day visitors, who spend on average just 0.2 days, or about five hours, in the Macau SAR.
The 6.5% growth in August visitors was led by a 20.2% surge in same-visitors, while overnight visitors dropped by 5.7% year-on-year to just under 1.7 million. Considering the first eight months of the year, same-date visitors have increased by 31.6% year-on-year to reach 14.54 million. Meanwhile, overnight visitors grew at a much slower rate of 5.7%, and the average length of stay held steady at 1.2 days.
Macau is on track to break the symbolic 40-million level this year, previously earmarked by the Institute for Tourism Studies as the city’s “optimal tourism carrying capacity.” Last year’s influx of 35.8 million tourists represented an almost 10% rise from a year earlier.
The rapid rise in the number of visitors has become a source of concern for the Macau public, especially as gaming receipts and other tourism spending are growing at a much slower pace or not at all.
Chinese tourists continued to form the bulk of visitors to the Macau SAR in August, growing 4.7% year-on-year to 2.64 million. Tourists from the mainland continued to come mostly from Guangdong Province and Hunan Province, with the former accounting for about half of visitor arrivals during the month. Those from the Greater Bay Area surged by 23.8% year-on-year to 1.15 million, with Zhuhai visitors growing by almost 50% year-on-year.
As for other popular source markets of Macau tourism, visitors from Hong Kong grew 19.7% to 666,000, while those from Taiwan edged up 1.2% to 95,000. The number of South Korean visitors fell 5% year-on-year to 62,000.
Analyzed by mode of transport, the DSEC data shows that the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge continues to be a major factor buttressing land arrivals. Visitor arrivals by land surged 33.7% year-on-year to 2.74 million in August, with 448,000 traveling via the still-new bridge spanning the Pearl River Delta. The number of bridge travelers dipped from the 553,000 seen in July, when land arrivals soared by 49%.
At the same time, the number of visitor arrivals by air rose 18.4% year-on-year to 356,000 in August, while those traveling by sea halved to less than 522,000.