Macau fares worse than HK as Feb arrivals tumble
Contributors are not employed, compensated or governed by TD, opinions and statements are from the contributor directly
Tourist arrivals in Hong Kong and Macau fell in February. The year-on-year drop was predictable due to the China’s Lunar New Year holidays falling in January this year, as opposed to February in 2008. However authorities in Macau will be far more concerned than their HK counterparts.
Figures released by the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) showed that visitor arrivals in February 2009 reached 2,162,325, 8.1% less than in February 2008. This brings cumulative arrivals for the first two months of 2009 to 4,958,424, 1.8% ahead of the same period last year. For HK, arrivals from North Asia and Taiwan saw the largest declines, at -14.4% and -17.3% respectively. However visitor numbers from Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA), Australia, NZ & Pacific, and The Americas all saw double-digit drops. The only market to see a rise in February arrivals was South & Southeast Asia, which saw 4.3% more visitors than February 2008.
Meanwhile Macau’s visitor arrivals for February 2009 fell by 17.3% year-on-year, reaching 1.65 million, according to figures released by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).
Xinhua reported the DSEC figures as showing that mainland Chinese visitors decreased by 22% year-on-year, while visitors from Hong Kong and Taiwan decreased by 12.3% and 12.2% respectively. The year-to-date picture for Macau is also worse than that of Hong Kong, with the gambling hub having seen 8.5% fewer visitors in the first two months of 2009, compared with the same period 12 months ago.
Comments are closed.