Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitor arrivals totalled 2,943,930 in December 2023, up by 656.0% year-on-year and 13.9% month-on-month. Same-day visitors (1,485,901) and overnight visitors (1,458,029) leapt by 829.0% and 535.5% year-on-year respectively. Meanwhile, the average length of stay of visitors dropped by 0.9 day year-on-year to 1.2 days; the duration for overnight visitors (2.2 days) decreased by 1.4 days whereas that for same-day visitors (0.2 day) remained steady.
As regards source of visitors, number of visitors from mainland China jumped by 483.0% year-on-year to 1,962,223 in December, with those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS; 1,060,216) surging by 542.1%. Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area soared by 421.2% year-on-year to 1,016,286, of whom 27.0% came from Zhuhai (273,974) and 21.9% from Guangzhou (222,218). Besides, Hong Kong visitors (686,441) and international visitors (238,611) rocketed by 1,501.6% and 7,223.8% year-on-year respectively.
For the whole year of 2023, visitor arrivals hiked by 394.9% year-on-year to 28,213,003, which recovered to 71.6% of the level in 2019. Overnight visitors (14,227,229) and same-day visitors (13,985,774) surged by 472.7% and 334.8% year-on-year respectively. The average length of stay of visitors shortened by 0.2 day year-on-year to 1.3 days, with that of overnight visitors (2.3 days) dropping by 1.1 days while that of same-day visitors (0.3 day) increasing by 0.2 day.
Number of Mainland visitors leapt by 273.1% year-on-year to 19,049,147 (67.5% of total) in 2023, with IVS visitors (10,634,155) soaring by 532.3%; visitors from the nine cities in the Pearl River Delta in the Greater Bay Area (9,305,372) showed an uplift of 179.2%. A total of 7,195,801 Hong Kong visitors (25.5%) and 1,459,566 international visitors (5.2%) were recorded, up by 1,301.5% and 10,589.7% year-on-year respectively. The numbers of Mainland, Hong Kong and international visitors in 2023 returned to 68.2%, 97.8% and 47.6% of the corresponding levels in 2019.
Analysed by checkpoint, number of visitor arrivals by land shot up by 322.9% year-on-year to 22,383,614 in 2023; among them, 47.0% arrived through the checkpoint of Border Gate (10,516,603), 33.6% came via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (7,519,072), and 14.0% via the Hengqin port (3,127,469). Meanwhile, visitor arrivals by sea and by air leapt by 2,127.7% and 783.3% year-on-year to 3,699,014 and 2,130,375 respectively.