MACAU, February 22 - Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitor arrivals increased by 24.7% year-on-year to 694,430 in January 2022; however, the figure represented a decrease of 15.4% month-on-month, ascribable to the tightening of border-control measures between Zhuhai and Macao in January in response to the pandemic situation in the neighbouring regions. Same-day visitors (450,428) surged by 56.5% year-on-year, whereas overnight visitors (244,002) dropped by 9.3%. Meanwhile, the average length of stay of visitors shortened by 0.3 day year-on-year to 1.3 days, as the proportion of same-day visitors (64.9%) grew by 13.2 percentage points; the duration for same-day visitors remained at 0.1 day while that for overnight visitors went up by 0.4 day to 3.4 days.

As regards source of visitors, number of visitors from mainland China expanded by 29.4% year-on-year to 642,016, with 167,771 of them travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme. Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area totalled 412,174, of whom 67.1% came from Zhuhai. Besides, there were 44,380 visitors from Hong Kong and 7,896 from Taiwan.

Analysed by checkpoint, number of visitor arrivals by land rose by 21.6% year-on-year to 630,805 in January; among them, 83.7% arrived through the checkpoint of Border Gate (528,066) and 10.5% came via the Hengqin port (66,039). Meanwhile, visitor arrivals by air and by sea totalled 50,644 and 12,981 respectively.