Macao visitor arrivals edge down by 4.7 pct in January

MACAO - Macao's visitor arrivals decreased by 4.7 percent year-on-year in January 2018, mainly due to the timing of the Chinese New Year which fell in January in 2017 but in February this year, the special administrative region (SAR)'s statistic department said here on Monday.

Latest data issued from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitor arrivals decreased by 4.7 percent year-on-year to 2,741,465 in January, and went down by 10.2 percent month-to-month compared with December 2017.

Same-day visitors dropped by 16.8 percent year-on-year to 1,258,358 while overnight visitors increased by 8.8 percent to 1,483,107. The average length of stay of visitors rose by 0.2 day year-on-year to 1.3 days.

The DSEC data also showed that visitors from Chinese mainland decreased by 3.5 percent year-on-year to 1,927,642, who mainly came from Guangdong, Hunan and Fujian provinces.

Visitors from Hong Kong SAR (438,573) went down by 16.8 percent. Meanwhile, visitors from the South Korea rose by 20.2 percent year-on-year to 97,861, exceeding those from China's Taiwan region (83,591) for the first time.

On the other hand, visitors from the United States (14,474), Canada (6,011) and Britain (3,812) registered decreases, whereas those from Australia (9,924) increased.