Visitors total 3.22 million in August holidays

Visitors totaled 3.22 million in August, a rise of 16.7% month-on-month, as tourists flock to the region amid summer holidays, data from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) has indicated.

China tour operator company Tuniu noted before summer that bookings to destinations such as Hong Kong and Macau were increasing rapidly.

Last month, the city recorded a post-pandemic high, receiving 140,000 tourists on one Saturday.

The SAR’s same-day visitors (1,653,866) and overnight visitors (1,567,825) soared 975.6% and 782.6% year-on-year respectively, albeit from a low base as last year’s figures were a recovery from July 2022 due to the outbreak.

The number of visitors from mainland China jumped 700.5% year-on-year to 2,322,580, with those traveling under the Individual Visit Scheme (1,341,623) surging 979.7%. Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area soared 501.9% year-on-year to 1,110,651, with 21.8% from Guangzhou (242,343) and 21.4% from Zhuhai (238,145). Visitors from Hong Kong (711,684) and Taiwan (58,104) rocketed by 1,865.7% and 1,225.4% year-on-year respectively.

In the first eight months of the year, the number of visitors expanded by 363.1% year-on-year to 17,627,112; overnight visitors (9,067,329) and same-day visitors (8,559,783) jumped by 519.1% and 265.5% respectively.  LV