Tourist arrivals zoom in October

This year’s October “golden week” holidays were Macau’s best ever, as over 2.43 million visitors came to the city – 22 per cent more than in October last year.

According to official statistics, mainland visitors are still the primary driver of growth, at 28.9 per cent up, compared to 8.1 per cent growth for Hong Kong visitors and a 5.5 per cent drop in Taiwanese arrivals. Day-trippers are still in the majority, at 52.7 per cent of the total, while nearly half of all mainland visitors came in under the Individual Visit Scheme.

It will be interesting to see how their mode of transport starts to change once the Venetian launches its ferry service. For now, however, growth in crossings via the land border at Gongbei is far outpacing growth in ferry arrivals – 26.8 per cent compared to 16 per cent. And although arrivals at the international airport are still less than one-sixth of the ferry total in volume, they also grew faster, by 17 per cent. Taiwanese (most of whom are transiting to the mainland) still dominate air arrivals, at 45 per cent of the 1.18 million total, while the remainder come mostly from southeast Asia and the mainland, at around 22 per cent each.