Visitor arrivals
Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitor arrivals increased by 9.6% year-on-year to 2,832,041 in November 2024, recovering to 97.3% of the level in the same month in 2019. Same-day visitors (1,548,454) and overnight visitors (1,283,587) grew by 14.1% and 4.6% year-on-year respectively. Meanwhile, the average length of stay of visitors held stable year-on-year at 1.2 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 11% year-on-year to 1,965,651 in November, with those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme (927,890) growing by 6%. Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area went up by 13.7% to 962,497. Visitors from the ten cities that were newly added to the Scheme grew by 8.5% year-on-year to 40,440, with the majority coming from Xi'an, Harbin and Taiyuan. Visitors from the Taiwan region (71,280) rose by 29.3% year-on-year, while those from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong SAR; 554,053) decreased by 0.8%. The numbers of visitors from mainland China, Hong Kong SAR and Taiwan region rebounded to 96.8%, 97% and 85.9% of the corresponding levels in November 2019.
International visitors rose by 20.9% year-on-year to 241,057 in November this year, a rise of 7% from the same month in 2019. Regarding the Southeast Asian markets, visitors from the Philippines (48,641), Malaysia (20,716) and Indonesia (14,706) went up by 22%, 25.5% and 19.3% year-on-year respectively, while those from Singapore (13,827) and Thailand (10,137) dropped by 10.3% and 24.3% respectively. Regarding the South Asian markets, visitors from India (8,500) decreased by 7.1% year-on-year. With respect to the Northeast Asian markets, visitors from the Republic of Korea (48,594) and Japan (11,719) expanded by 61.1% and 1.3% year-on-year respectively. As regards long-haul markets, visitors from the USA (16,218) recorded an uplift of 18.3% year-on-year.
Analysed by checkpoint, number of visitor arrivals by land grew by 10.3% year-on-year to 2,268,471 in November; among them, 48.5% arrived through the checkpoint of Border Gate (1,101,007), 33.1% came via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (751,316) and 14.1% via the Hengqin port (319,928). Meanwhile, visitor arrivals by sea (312,614) and by air (250,956) increased by 0.4% and 16.5% year-on-year respectively.
In the first eleven months of 2024, number of visitor arrivals expanded by 26.2% year-on-year to 31,888,313, back to 87.8% of the figure in the same period in 2019. In addition, number of international visitors (2,130,891) surged by 74.5% year-on-year, returning to 75.8% of the level in the first eleven months of 2019. Same-day visitors (17,172,200) and overnight visitors (14,716,113) grew by 37.4% and 15.2% 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.