Macao's visitor arrivals down 6.1 pct in January

Macao's visitor arrivals decreased by 6.1 percent year-on-year to 2,312,321 in January this year, according to figures released on Wednesday by the city's Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).

Of all the arrivals in January, 51.7 percent spent only one day. The average length of stay of visitors increased by 0.1 day year- on-year to 1.0 day, the figures indicated.

Analyzed by place of residence, visitors from the Chinese mainland decreased by 1.4 percent year-on-year to 1.47 million, 41. 8 percent of the total, of which 616,066 traveling to Macao under the Individual Visit Scheme.

Visitors from Hong Kong (509,826), Taiwan (76,841) and Japan ( 26,904) decreased by 20.1 percent, 10.2 percent and 15.0 percent year-on-year respectively, while those from South Korea (52,668) and Thailand (21,810) increased by 14.1 percent and 81 percent respectively.

As regards long-haul visitors, those from the USA (14,630), Australia (12,203), Canada (5,992) and the UK (4,317) decreased by 5.1 percent, 8.8 percent, 11.7 percent and nine percent respectively in January 2013.