Macau visitor arrivals down 26% in 2022

Macau’s visitor arrivals in 2022 were the lowest since 1999.

Macau.- The Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) has reported that Macau registered 5.70m visitor arrivals in 2022, down 26 per cent year-on-year. 

The city was heavily affected by a number of travel restrictions as countermeasures due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Mainland China was the only country to have a largely quarantine-free travel bubble with Macau until December when those arriving from Covid-19 risk areas in mainland China were no longer required to undergo quarantine.

In 2022, Macau received about 5.11 million tourists from mainland China, which represents nearly 90 per cent of total visitor arrivals. The majority of them came from Guangdong province (5.1m). 

The number of Individual Visit (IVS) tourists (mainly from Guangdong Province) reached 1.68m. It represented a year-on-year decrease of 31.3 per cent.

The number of tourists in 2022 hit a record low in Macau. The total was even lower than the 5.9m registered in 2020.

In 2022, Macao received approximately 3.22m same-day visitors and 2.48m overnight visitors, a year-on-year decrease of 19.8 per cent and 32.8 per cent respectively. In 2022, the average length of stay for tourists for the whole year was 1.5 days and 3.4 days for overnight guests.

In December alone, the city received 389,390 tourists, an increase of 6.2 per cent month-on-month. However, the December statistic was down 52.6 per cent from a year earlier and coincided with a surge in Covid-19 infections in Macau and mainland China.

Macau expects 50k daily tourists during Chinese New Year

The Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) is expecting 40,000 to 50,000 daily arrivals during the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday, which begins on Sunday, January 22 and ends on Sunday, February 5. In 2019, pre-pandemic, they registered about 170,000 visitors per day during that break.

Earlier this week, Macao Government Tourism Office director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes said most hotels in Macau are “fully booked” for the holiday period.

While talking to local media, however, Fernandes didn’t disclose specific numbers in terms of hotel room percentages but remarked the MGTO understood from communication with several resort operators, that the number of hotel rooms they can supply to the market had returned to pre-Covid-19 levels.