Macau’s casino revenue may be facing headwinds but the number of visitors entering the SAR continues to rise with visitor arrivals climbing by 16.3% year-on-year to 3,530,233 in July.
The opening of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge has been cited as a major cause of the uptick, according to the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC), which revealed a 49.0% increase in arrivals by land. Of those, 1,839,002 arrived via the Border Gate – up 20.5% year-on-year – with 553,026 entering via the bridge. Visitor arrivals by air grew by 14.7% to 323,785 while those by ferry declined 43.6% to 544,268.
As always, the majority of visitation came from mainland China with an 18.5% year-on-year increase to 2,569,941. Notably, visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area surged by 27.5% year-on-year to 982,429; with those from Zhuhai up 50.2% to 276,137 and from Guangzhou up 21.1% to 198,743.
Once again, same day visitors dominated growth in July with same-day visitors (1,815,749) rising 29.9% to 1,815,749 while overnight visitors rose by just 4.7% to 1,714,484.
Visitor numbers for the first seven months of 2019 have increased by 20.0% year-on-year to 23,814,866.
