Visitor arrivals
Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitor arrivals increased by 30.1% year-on-year to 25,920,914 in the first three quarters of 2024, recovering to 85.8% of the number in the same period in 2019. Same-day visitors (13,834,674) and overnight visitors (12,086,240) grew by 42.8% and 18.1% year-on-year respectively. Meanwhile, the average length of stay of visitors shortened by 0.1 day year-on-year to 1.2 days, with that of overnight visitors remaining unchanged at 2.3 days.
As regards source of visitors, visitors from mainland China increased by 36.3% year-on-year to 18,217,413 in the first three quarters, with those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS; 9,257,455) growing by 20.4%; visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area (8,796,640) went up by 35.5%. In the first three quarters, visitor arrivals from the ten cities that were newly added to the Scheme surged by 53.9% year-on-year to 366,817, of whom 76,464 were IVS visitors. Meanwhile, visitors from Hong Kong (5,402,071) and Taiwan (623,880) rose by 0.8% and 81.9% year-on-year respectively. The numbers of visitors from Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan rebounded to 84.9%, 97.2% and 76.5% of the corresponding levels in the first three quarters of 2019.
International visitors soared by 95.1% year-on-year to 1,677,550 in the first three quarters this year, back to 70.7% of the level in the first three quarters of 2019. Regarding the Southeast Asian markets, visitors from the Philippines (345,537), Indonesia (127,861), Thailand (95,108) and Singapore (74,156) went up by 75.6%, 33.6%, 70.6% and 61.6% year-on-year respectively. Moreover, visitors from Malaysia (117,739) leapt by 136.4%. Regarding the South Asian markets, number of visitors from India (77,071) surged by 133.6% year-on-year. With respect to the Northeast Asian markets, visitors from the Republic of Korea (341,497) and Japan (93,001) jumped by 207% and 102.6% year-on-year respectively. As regards long-haul markets, visitors from the USA (103,379) recorded an uplift of 83.2% year-on-year.
Analysed by checkpoint, number of visitor arrivals by land grew by 30.1% year-on-year to 20,538,678 in the first three quarters of 2024; among them, 48.5% arrived through the checkpoint of Border Gate (9,955,006), 31.5% came via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (6,469,601) and 14.9% via the Hengqin port (3,058,056). Meanwhile, visitor arrivals by sea (3,080,246) and by air (2,301,990) increased by 15.4% and 56.3% year-on-year respectively.
In September 2024, number of visitor arrivals expanded by 9.9% year-on-year to 2,528,011, back to 91.4% of the figure in the same month in 2019. In addition, number of international visitors (173,614) rose by 37.6% year-on-year, returning to 92.7% of the September 2019 level. Same-day visitors (1,308,147) and overnight visitors (1,219,864) grew by 15.6% and 4.3% year-on-year respectively. Meanwhile, the average length of stay of visitors (1.3 days) shortened by 0.1 day year-on-year.