Visitor arrivals
Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitor arrivals increased by 13.7% year-on-year to 3,135,358 in October 2024, recovering to 97.7% of the level in the same month in 2019; in addition, the figure represented a month-on-month growth of 24%. Same-day visitors (1,789,072) and overnight visitors (1,346,286) grew by 23.2% and 3.1% 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 remaining unchanged at 2.3 days.
As regards source of visitors, visitors from mainland China increased by 16.1% year-on-year to 2,263,443 in October, with those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme (1,078,248) growing by 6.8%. Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area went up by 21.8% to 1,158,666. Visitors from the ten cities that were newly added to the Scheme grew by 4.2% year-on-year to 40,105, with the majority coming from Xi'an, Harbin and Taiyuan. Visitors from the Taiwan region (68,701) rose by 28% year-on-year, while those from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong SAR; 590,930) decreased by 0.2%. Number of Hong Kong SAR visitors in October showed a 4.1% increase compared with the same month in 2019, and the numbers of visitors from mainland China and the Taiwan region rebounded to 96.6% and 81% of the corresponding levels in October 2019.
International visitors rose by 31.2% year-on-year to 212,284 in October this year, back to 98.8% of the October 2019 level. Regarding the Southeast Asian markets, visitors from the Philippines (38,924), Malaysia (15,926), Indonesia (13,625) and Singapore (9,558) went up by 30.3%, 47.1%, 0.3% and 1.9% year-on-year respectively, while those from Thailand (12,036) dropped by 14.5%. Regarding the South Asian markets, visitors from India (8,148) increased by 29% year-on-year. With respect to the Northeast Asian markets, visitors from the Republic of Korea (47,069) and Japan (9,594) expanded by 83.5% and 23.5% year-on-year respectively. As regards long-haul markets, visitors from the USA (13,022) recorded an uplift of 20.8% year-on-year.
Analysed by checkpoint, number of visitor arrivals by land grew by 14.4% year-on-year to 2,538,478 in October; among them, 48.8% arrived through the checkpoint of Border Gate (1,239,619), 30.1% came via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (763,976) and 15.7% via the Hengqin port (397,891). Meanwhile, visitor arrivals by sea (344,511) and by air (252,369) increased by 2.9% and 23.5% year-on-year respectively.
In the first ten months of 2024, number of visitor arrivals expanded by 28.1% year-on-year to 29,056,272, back to 87% of the figure in the same period in 2019. In addition, number of international visitors (1,889,834) surged by 85% year-on-year, returning to 73.1% of the level in the first ten months of 2019. Same-day visitors (15,623,746) and overnight visitors (13,432,526) grew by 40.2% and 16.4% 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.