Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitor arrivals increased by 21.6% year-on-year to 2,692,191 in May 2024, recovering to 79.3% of the figure in the same month of 2019; besides, the figure represented a rise of 3.5% month-on-month. Same-day visitors (1,430,741) and overnight visitors (1,261,450) showed respective growth of 27.2% and 15.9% year-on-year. The average length of stay of visitors held stable year-on-year at 1.2 days; the duration for same-day visitors remained unchanged at 0.2 day, while that for overnight visitors rose by 0.1 day to 2.3 days.
As regards source of visitors, visitors from mainland China increased by 25.9% year-on-year to 1,856,283 in May, with those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme (893,373) rising by 6.3%. Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area (932,961) went up by 30.3% year-on-year. Visitors from Hong Kong (582,083) dropped by 3.3% year-on-year while those from Taiwan (68,971) surged by 118.7%. The number of Hong Kong visitors returned to the May 2019 level, while the numbers of visitors from mainland China and Taiwan rebounded to 76.5% and 78.5% of the corresponding levels in the same month of 2019.
International visitors jumped by 74.4% year-on-year to 184,854 in May, back to 61.3% of the figure in the same month of 2019. Regarding the Southeast Asian markets, number of visitors from Indonesia (14,512) rose by 15.6% over the same month of 2019. Numbers of visitors from the Philippines (35,852) and Malaysia (15,094) returned to 73.8% and 80.2% of the respective figures in May 2019. Regarding the South Asian markets, number of visitors from India (13,759) returned to 65.7% of the May 2019 level. With respect to the Northeast Asian markets, numbers of visitors from the Republic of Korea (33,999) and Japan (9,924) recovered to 51.7% and 29.4% of the corresponding levels in the same month of 2019. As regards long-haul markets, visitors from the USA (10,027) rebounded to 58.9% of the May 2019 figure.
Analysed by checkpoint, number of visitor arrivals by land grew by 20.5%year-on-year to 2,100,821 in May; among them, 49.6% arrived through the checkpoint of Border Gate (1,042,329), 32.1% came via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (673,960) and 13.3% via the Hengqin port (279,253). Meanwhile, visitor arrivals by sea (332,341) and by air (259,029) increased by 6.6% and 63.7% year-on-year respectively.
In the first five months of 2024, number of visitor arrivals expanded by 50.2% year-on-year to 14,168,665, recovering to 82.4% of the level in the same period in 2019. Same-day visitors (7,572,389) and overnight visitors (6,596,276) grew by 67.1% and 34.5% 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) both decreasing by 0.1 day.
