Macau recorded a total of 694,430 visitor arrivals in January, an increase of 24.7% year-on-year but 15.4% lower than December, according to information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).
The sequential decline was attributed to the tightening of border-control measures between Zhuhai and Macau in January in response to an outbreak of COVID-19 in the mainland Chinese city. Parts of Zhuhai were locked down on 14 January after 10 positive cases of COVID-19 were detected during a mass testing blitz, with the lockdown eventually ended on the morning of 28 January.
January’s visitor arrival tally included 450,428 same-day visitors, up 56.5% year-on-year, while overnight visitors fell 9.3% to 244,002. As a result, the average length of stay of visitors fell by by 0.3 days year-on-year to 1.3 days.
Of the 642,016 visitors from mainland China in January, 167,771 of them travelled under the Individual Visit Scheme while there were 412,174 visitor arrivals from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area. There were 44,380 visitors from Hong Kong and 7,896 from Taiwan.
Analyzed by checkpoint, the number of visitor arrivals by land rose by 21.6% year-on-year to 630,805 in January, of which 528,066 entered via the Border Gate. Visitor arrivals by air and by sea totalled 50,644 and 12,981 respectively.
