More than 27 million people visited Macau in the first eight months of the year, an increase of 18% in relation to the same period last year, according to official figures.
Between January and August, the annual number of one-day visitors (14.540.874) and tourists (12.897.108) increased by 31.6% and 5.7% respectively, totaling 27.437.982 visitors, according to the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).
A visitor is any person who traveled to Macau for a period of less than one year. This term is then divided into tourist (an individual who spends at least one night in Macau) and one-day visitor (the one who does not stay for a single night).
In the months under review, visitors stayed in Macau for an average period of 1.2 days.
The majority of visitors who arrived in Macau until August came from the inner regions of China (19.530.804), an increase of 19.1% over the same period last year. Visitors from South Korea (568.243), Hong Kong (4.995.346) and Taiwan (727.511) grew by 3.4%, 21.8% and 0.9% respectively.
3.623.116 people visited Macau in August alone, an increase of 6.5% over the same period last year.
In 2018, Macau beat the record number of tourists: 35.8 million, an increase of 9.8% over 2017. Moreover, the hotel revenues reached 37.29 billion patacas (4.2 billion euros), an increase of 14.5% over the previous year. According to the Statistics and Census Service, this is justified by “the increase of the number of hotel and pension guests”.
More than 14 million people stayed in Macau’s hotels and guesthouses last year, an increase of 7.2% compared to 2017.
The majority of hotel revenue comes from 5-star hotels (3.2 billion euros), 78.0% of total hotel revenue, up 18.6% in 2017.
Revenues from 4-star hotels were 4.39 billion patacas (492 million euros) and revenues from 3 and 2-star hotels were 3.78 billion patacas (424 million euros).
On the other hand, hotel expenses increased by 10% to 31.78 billion patacas (3.5 billion euros). According to data provided by the Statistics and Census Service, the 116 hotels and pensions (three more than in 2017) employed 52.976 people, an increase of 3.7% over the previous year.