Macau's government tourism agency (MGTO) said in a release on Thursday that visitors to Macau totaled about 8.88 million in the first quarter, up 79.6% year-on-year and 84.8% in the same quarter of 2019.
Mainland China, Macau's most important supply market for gaming and tourism, accounted for 6.3 million people, or about 71% of the total, in the three months to March 31.
The daily average of 69,239 visitors to mainland China was up nearly 95% from a year ago, and nearly 84% in the first quarter of 2019, before the pandemic.
Xi'an and Qingdao are said to plan individual visits to two Chinese cities, which were added to China's departure visa system for independent travelers traveling to Macau and Hong Kong from March 6.
From January to March, Macau received 47,000 visitors from Xi'an and 24,000 from Qingdao, respectively, which is 6.4 percent and 44.5 percent higher than the same period in 2019, the MGTO said in a statement. Combined, they represent just 1.1 percent of all visitors from the mainland.
Hong Kong, which ranked second behind the mainland as Macau's source market, supplied nearly 1.82 million visitors to the city in the first quarter. This was 101.4% in the same period in 2019, when Macau received 1.79 million visitors from the city.
The number of arrivals from overseas markets, excluding Greater China, reached more than 580,000 in the first quarter. That was equivalent to about 6,400 international visitors a day, nearly 68% of the same quarter in 2019, it said in a release on Thursday.
International travelers came from China's neighbours the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore. India, South Korea and Japan were also represented, the MGTO said, citing public security police figures. Numbers per market were not mentioned.
In comments to local media at Thursday's event, MGTO director Maria Helena de Sena Fernandez said the Macau tourism authority was "confident" that it would attract more than 2 million international travelers for all of 2024. There she also predicted Macau would attract 130,000 visitors daily during the upcoming May festival, a public holiday in mainland China.
BY: 슬롯사이트