visitor arrivals
Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitor arrivals increased by 14.4% year-on-year to 2,600,717 in April 2024, recovering to 75.8% of the figure in the same month of 2019; yet, the number represented a month-on-month drop of 4.4%. Same-day visitors (1,349,927) and overnight visitors (1,250,790) showed respective growth of 23.0% and 6.3% year-on-year. The average length of stay of visitors held stable year-on-year at 1.2 days; the duration for overnight visitors (2.3 days) rose by 0.1 day, while that for same-day visitors (0.2 day) went down by 0.1 day.
As regards source of visitors, visitors from mainland China increased by 25.3% year-on-year to 1,737,314 in April, with those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme (793,351) decreasing by 3.0%. Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area (792,949) rose by 28.6% year-on-year. Visitors from Hong Kong (581,646) dropped by 22.0% year-on-year while those from Taiwan (73,460) grew by 120.6%. The numbers of visitors from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan returned to 74.2%, 83.5% and 80.0% of the corresponding levels in the same month of 2019.
International visitors jumped by 91.9% year-on-year to 208,297 in April, back to 68.6% of the figure in the same month of 2019. Regarding the Southeast Asian markets, number of visitors from Indonesia (19,571) rose by 22.0% over the same month of 2019. Numbers of visitors from the Philippines (35,851), Malaysia (17,942) and Thailand (16,492) returned to 86.6%, 92.7% and 90.6% of the respective figures in April 2019. With respect to the Northeast Asian markets, numbers of visitors from the Republic of Korea (37,493) and Japan (8,307) recovered to 60.9% and 30.6% of the corresponding levels in the same month of 2019. As regards long-haul markets, visitors from the USA (12,872) rebounded to 58.5% of the April 2019 figure.
Analysed by checkpoint, number of visitor arrivals by land grew by 13.1% year-on-year to 2,012,501 in April; among them, 47.3% arrived through the checkpoint of Border Gate (952,032), 35.5% came via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (713,524) and 12.6% via the Hengqin port (252,692). Meanwhile, visitor arrivals by sea (315,432) dropped by 7.5% year-on-year, while those by air (272,784) surged by 78.0%.
In the first four months of 2024, number of visitor arrivals expanded by 58.9% year-on-year to 11,476,474, recovering to 83.2% of the level in the same period in 2019. Same-day visitors (6,141,648) and overnight visitors (5,334,826) grew by 80.3% and 39.8% year-on-year respectively. The average length of stay of visitors shortened by 0.1 day year-on-year to 1.2 days, with that of overnight visitors (2.2 days) and same-day visitors (0.2 day) decreasing by 0.1 day.