Visitor arrivals for February 2015

Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that attributable to the Lunar New Year holidays, visitor arrivals increased by 4.5% year-on-year to 2,676,024 in February 2015; same-day visitors totalled 1,574,123, up by 13.8%. The average length of stay of visitors decreased by 0.1 day year-on-year to 0.9 day; overnight and same-day visitors had an average stay of 1.8 days and 0.2 day respectively. Visitors from Mainland China rose by 10.7% year-on-year to 1,898,650, coming primarily from Guangdong Province (965,127), Zhejiang Province (64,430) and Fujian Province (58,351). Mainland visitors travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme set a new single-month record of 1,141,165, up substantially by 38.9%. Visitors from Taiwan (74,176) and the Republic of Korea (56,240) increased by 1.4% and 7.3% respectively year-on-year, while those from Hong Kong (522,796) decreased by 5.2%. Long-haul visitors from the United States (11,693), Australia (5,665), Canada (5,245) and the United Kingdom (3,920) registered year-on-year decline. Regarding mode of transport, visitor arrivals by land totalled 1,585,052, up by 15.1% year-on-year; visitors entering through the Border Gate accounted for 85.3% of the total, at 1,352,055, up by 13.0%, while those arriving via the Checkpoint of Cotai rose notably by 29.9% to 231,247. Visitor arrivals by sea decreased by 8.9% year-on-year to 915,999, of which visitors entering via the Outer Harbour (576,616) and the Provisional Ferry Terminal in Taipa (287,156) dropped by 8.7% and 11.0% respectively. Visitor arrivals by air decreased by 2.0% year-on-year to 174,973, with 174,036 entering via the airport. In the first two months of 2015, visitor arrivals reached 5,141,636, up by 1.5% year-on-year, with same-day visitors sharing 57.4% of the total. Visitors from Mainland China (3,568,302), Taiwan (151,159) and the Republic of Korea (125,031) increased by 4.8%, 0.1% and 12.1% respectively year-on-year, but those from Hong Kong (995,996) and Japan (38,685) dropped by 4.8% and 24.8%. Moreover, long-haul visitors from the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom recorded year-on-year decrease.