Visitor arrivals
Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitor arrivals increased by 9.5% year-on-year to 3,021,189 in July 2024, recovering to 85.6% of the number in July 2019; besides, the figure represented a rise of 18.4% month-on-month. Same-day visitors (1,596,662) went up by 20.2% year-on-year while overnight visitors (1,424,527) dropped by 0.5%. The average length of stay of visitors shortened by 0.1 day year-on-year to 1.2 days, with that of overnight visitors rising by 0.1 day to 2.4 days.
As regards source of visitors, visitors from mainland China increased by 14.3% year-on-year to 2,183,397 in July, with those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS; 1,102,215) growing by 1.4%; visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area (996,061) went up by 15.1%. In July, visitor arrivals from the ten cities that were newly added to the Scheme grew by 16.3% year-on-year to 37,663; about 50.0% of them were IVS visitors (18,837). Meanwhile, visitors from Hong Kong (589,026) decreased by 10.9% year-on-year, while those from Taiwan (75,783) rose by 29.5%. The numbers of visitors from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in July this year rebounded to 85.0%, 92.8% and 78.4% of the corresponding levels in July 2019.
International visitors rose by 33.3% year-on-year to 172,983 in July this year, back to 75.5% of the July 2019 figure. Regarding the Southeast Asian markets, visitors from the Philippines (42,963), Malaysia (8,965) and Singapore (5,669) hiked by 38.2%, 31.4% and 13.3% year-on-year respectively, while those from Indonesia (13,570) and Thailand (8,294) dropped by 7.4% and 14.0%. With respect to the Northeast Asian markets, visitors from the Republic of Korea (32,825) and Japan (8,778) leapt by 66.3% and 57.9% year-on-year respectively. As regards long-haul markets, visitors from the USA (14,869) recorded an uplift of 52.7% year-on-year.
Analysed by checkpoint, number of visitor arrivals by air (277,698) and by land (2,411,515) grew by 24.5% and 11.4% year-on-year respectively in July; among those arriving by land, 49.8% arrived through the checkpoint of Border Gate (1,201,031), 31.6% came via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (760,992) and 14.5% via the Hengqin port (350,433). Meanwhile, visitor arrivals by sea (331,976) decreased by 10.8% year-on-year.
In the first seven months of 2024, number of visitor arrivals expanded by 37.0% year-on-year to 19,741,172, back to 82.9% of the level in the same period in 2019; besides, number of international visitors (1,341,605) returned to 68.1% of the number in the first seven months of 2019. Same-day visitors (10,485,165) and overnight visitors (9,256,007) grew by 51.8% and 23.4% year-on-year respectively. The average length of stay of visitors shortened by 0.1 day year-on-year to 1.2 days; the duration for same-day visitors (0.2 day) decreased by 0.1 day while that for overnight visitors (2.3 days) remained unchanged.