Macau tourism authorities have set a goal to welcome 33 million visitors in 2024. If realized, this would represent a nearly 17 percent increase from 2023.
The projection is based on the fact that China’s government has added 10 more Chinese cities under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS), according to Helena de Senna Fernandes, Head of the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO).
Xi’an and Qingdao are newly added mainland cities for the IVS to Hong Kong and Macau this year. According to Fernandes, since the scheme became effective in March, the number of visitors to Macau from these two cities has continued to rise.
In the first five months of this year, over 34,000 visitors from Qingdao came to Macau, exceeding the 25,000 visitors during the same period in 2019. Meanwhile, more than 64,000 visitors from Xi’an traveled to Macau, recovering to 92 percent of the 2019 level.
Local media outlet Macao Daily News reported that, as the number of visitors to Macau increases, visitor spending has also risen compared to previous levels. Total visitor spending in the first quarter of this year reached MOP20.35 billion ($2.53 billion), an increase of nearly 36 percent compared to the same period last year.
In the first five months of 2024, cumulative visitor arrivals reached approximately 14.18 million, about 82 percent of the level seen in the same period in 2019. The data reflects a continued rise in tourists’ willingness to travel to and spend in Macau, a positive development trend for Macau’s tourism industry.
The number of visitors from Hong Kong and Taiwan amounted to approximately 2.98 million and 324,000, respectively, in this five-month period, representing increases of 4.6 percent and 144.2 percent compared to last year. These figures have recovered to 97 percent and 73 percent of the levels seen in the same period in 2019.
Additionally, Macau received around 978,000 international visitors in the same period, with a daily average of over 6,400, an increase of approximately 176 percent compared to last year, recovering to 67 percent of the levels seen in the same period in 2019.
