Visitor arrivals
Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that number of visitor arrivals set a new monthly record of 3,651,731 during the summer holiday in August 2024, which represented a year-on-year increase of 13.3%, a rise of 0.8% from the same month in 2019, and a month-on-month growth of 20.9%. Same-day visitors (2,041,362) and overnight visitors (1,610,369) grew by 23.4% and 2.7% year-on-year respectively. Meanwhile, the average length of stay of visitors shortened by 0.1 day year-on-year to 1.1 days, with that of overnight visitors rising by 0.1 day to 2.3 days.
As regards source of visitors, visitors from mainland China increased by 18.5% year-on-year to 2,752,322 in August, with those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS; 1,466,190) growing by 9.3%; visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area (1,346,743) went up by 21.3%. In August, visitor arrivals from the ten cities that were newly added to the Scheme grew by 17.1% year-on-year to 45,599, and 51.9% of them were IVS visitors (23,652). Besides, visitors from Taiwan (73,629) rose by 26.7% year-on-year, while those from Hong Kong (663,449) decreased by 6.8%. Number of Mainland visitors in August this year showed a 4% increase compared with the same month in 2019, and the numbers of visitors from Hong Kong and Taiwan rebounded to 99.6% and 77.3% of the corresponding levels in August 2019.
International visitors rose by 25.5% year-on-year to 162,331 in August this year, back to 75.3% of the August 2019 level. Regarding the Southeast Asian markets, visitors from the Philippines (35,180), Malaysia (7,647) and Singapore (5,806) went up by 31.7%, 4.9% and 1.9% year-on-year respectively, while those from Indonesia (10,054) and Thailand (6,383) dropped by 10.1% and 23%. With respect to the Northeast Asian markets, visitors from the Republic of Korea (36,923) and Japan (10,582) rose by 61.4% and 24.8% year-on-year respectively. As regards long-haul markets, visitors from the USA (10,295) recorded an uplift of 18.2% year-on-year.
Analysed by checkpoint, number of visitor arrivals by air (282,733) and by land (2,986,134) grew by 24.7% and 16% year-on-year respectively in August. Among those arriving by land, 50.1% arrived through the checkpoint of Border Gate (1,495,115), 28.3% came via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (846,240) and 17.2% via the Hengqin port (514,291). On the other hand, visitor arrivals by sea (382,864) decreased by 9.2% year-on-year.
In the first eight months of 2024, number of visitor arrivals expanded by 32.7% year-on-year to 23,392,903, corresponding to 85.3% of the figure in the same period in 2019. In addition, number of international visitors (1,503,936) returned to 68.9% of the level in the first eight months of 2019. Same-day visitors (12,526,527) and overnight visitors (10,866,376) grew by 46.3% and 19.8% year-on-year respectively. Meanwhile, the average length of stay of visitors (1.2 days) shortened by 0.1 day year-on-year; the duration for same-day visitors (0.2 day) decreased by 0.1 day while that for overnight visitors (2.3 days) remained unchanged.