CHINA (MACAU). Visitor arrivals to the Special Administrative Region surged by +144.1% month-on-month to 801,300 in November driven by key tourism events such as the Macau Grand Prix (21 November) and the Food Festival (19 November to 5 December). Encouragingly for travel sector stakeholders that figure represented a +25.9% rise year-on-year.
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, however, arrivals equated to just 27.5% of the 2,910,118 visitors in November 2019, according to the Government of Macao Special Administrative Region Statistics and Census Service.
With occasional exceptions, Macau has managed to remain largely COVID-free through the pandemic, recording just 78 cases since the crisis began. That number includes the Special Administrative Region’s first imported case of the Omicron variant, a Macau ID holder who tested positive on arrival at Macau International Airport on Saturday after returning from the USA via a transit stop at Changi Airport in Singapore. All arriving overseas air travellers have to undergo quarantine in Macau.
While numbers remain far below pre-pandemic results, many of those that are travelling to Macau are spending heavily on shopping, according to multiple sources, good news for brands and travel retailers such as DFS, Duty Free Americas, Heinemann, China Duty Free Group, King Power Group and The Shilla Duty Free.
During the first 11 months of 2021, Macau attracted 6,885,073 visitors, up +31.5% year-on-year (but down -81% on 2019 levels). Of that total, 91.2% were from the Mainland, 31.5% under the Individual Visit Scheme.
Same-day visitors surge
For November, the number of same-day visitors (513,887) rose by 64.4% year-on-year while overnight visitors (287,413) declined by -11.2%.
The average length of stay eased by 0.4 day year-on-year to 1.3 days due to an uplift of 15.0 percentage points in the proportion of same-day visitors (64.1%). The duration for overnight visitors extended by 0.3 day year-on-year to 3.4 days whereas that of same-day visitors remained at 0.1 day.
Due to travel restrictions, Mainland visitors dominated the arrivals statistics, growing by +25.9% year-on-year to 741,226, with 195,868 (26.4%) of them travelling under the IVS.
Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area totalled 482,543, of whom 61.8% came from Zhuhai. Additionally, 54,655 visitors came from Hong Kong and 5,297 from Taiwan.
Analysed by checkpoint, the number of visitor arrivals by land increased by +27.4% year-on-year to 761,835 in November. Among them, 81.9% arrived through the checkpoint of Border Gate, 11.4% came via the Hengqin port and 4.6% through the checkpoint of Qingmao. Meanwhile, visitor arrivals by air and by sea totalled just 20,471 and 18,994 respectively.
In the first eleven months of 2021,visitor arrivals grew by 31.5% year-on-year to 6,885,073. Same-day visitors (3,582,584) and overnight visitors (3,302,489) increased by 27.7% and 35.8% year-on-year respectively.
The average length of stay of visitors rose by 0.2 day year-on-year to 1.6 days; the duration for overnight visitors (3.2 days) lengthened by 0.4 day whereas that for same-day visitors (0.1 day) decreased by 0.1 day.
