Visitors to Macao up 8.5% in Aug

Sep. 22, 2008 (China Knowledge) - Macao received 2,583,372 visitors in August, representing a year-on-year rise of 8.5%, announced the Statistics and Census Service of the Macao SAR government on Monday.

Visitors were mainly from Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which account for 57.6%, 29.3% and 4.4% of the total respectively.

The number of visitors from Chinese mainland (1,488,084) and Hong Kong (757,784) recorded increases of 10.6% and 5.2% respectively, while those form Taiwan (112,454) declined 7.0% from a year earlier. Same-day visitors were 1,357,855, accounting for 52.6% of the total.

Over the first eight months this year, visitor arrivals rose 17.1% year-on-year to 20,172,569.

Of the total, visitors from Chinese mainland and Hong Kong grew 25.1% and 0.9% year-on-year respectively, while those from Taiwan fell 5.0% over the same period of last year. Same-day visitors stood at 10,662,177 contributing 52.9% to the total.

During the Jan-Aug period, visitors arriving at Macao by sea rose 12.4% from a year ago to 6,467,525, while visitors arriving by land and by air numbered 12,566,636 and 1,138,408, representing year-on-year growth of 19.3% and 20.9% respectively.