Visitor arrivals
Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitor arrivals increased by 43.6% year-on-year to 16,719,983 in the first half of 2024, recovering to 82.4% of the figure in the same period of 2019. Same-day visitors (8,888,503) and overnight visitors (7,831,480) showed respective growth of 59.3% and 29.1% year-on-year; the ratio of same-day visitors to overnight visitors was 1:0.9. 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 52.9% year-on-year to 11,537,999 in the first half of 2024, with those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS; 5,950,165) rising by 31.8%; visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area (5,580,298) went up by 48.2%. In the first half of the year, visitor arrivals from the ten cities that were newly added to the Scheme surged by 89.0% year-on-year to 251,678, of whom 21,668 were IVS visitors. Meanwhile, visitors from Hong Kong (3,608,467) and Taiwan (404,895) grew by 4.5% and 130.4% year-on-year respectively. The number of visitors from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in the first half of 2024 rebounded to 80.6%, 97.7% and 75.6% of the corresponding levels in the same period of 2019.
International visitors jumped by 146.3% year-on-year to 1,168,622 in the first half of 2024, back to 67.2% of the figure in the same period of 2019. Regarding the Southeast Asian markets, number of visitors from the Philippines (234,336) showed a jump of 105.1% year-on-year. Numbers of visitors from Indonesia (91,953), Malaysia (85,122) and Thailand (74,420) grew by 58.2%, 199.9% and 146.7% year-on-year respectively. With respect to the Northeast Asian markets, numbers of visitors from the Republic of Korea (231,859) and Japan (61,870) leapt by 400.4% and 178.7% year-on-year respectively. As regards long-haul markets, visitors from the USA (69,566) recorded an uplift of 129.4% year-on-year.
Analysed by checkpoint, number of visitor arrivals by land grew by 42.3% year-on-year to 13,110,676 in the first half of 2024; among them, 48.0% arrived through the checkpoint of Border Gate (6,293,827), 32.6% came via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (4,268,006) and 14.0% via the Hengqin port (1,835,288). Meanwhile, visitor arrivals by sea (2,087,227) and by air (1,522,080) increased by 30.5% and 82.4% year-on-year respectively.
In June 2024 alone, number of visitor arrivals totalled 2,551,318, up by 15.5% year-on-year; the figure recovered to 82.4% of the level in the same month in 2019, but represented a month-on-month drop of 5.2%. Same-day visitors (1,316,114) and overnight visitors (1,235,204) grew by 25.8% and 6.1% year-on-year respectively. The average length of stay of visitors shortened by 0.1 day year-on-year to 1.2 days; the duration for same-day visitors (0.2 day) held stable while that for overnight visitors (2.3 days) increased by 0.1 day.