Macao's visitor arrivals up 0.3 pct in 2012

The number of visitor arrivals in Macao exceeded 28 million last year, a minor year-on-year increase of 0.3 percent over 2011, Director of Macao Government Tourist Office aria Helena de Senna Fernandes said on Tuesday.

Fernandes made the announcement at the MGTO Annual Press Conference at the Macao Tower Convention and Entertainment Center, where media was briefed with last year's tourism development of Macao and outlined this year's tourism strategies and marketing promotional activities.

According to preliminary figures, Macao's visitor arrivals hit 28,082,000 in 2012, with Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan remaining to be the top three visitor generating markets, donating over 25,000,000 visitors, an increase of 0.4 percent. Meanwhile, the number of international visitors dropped slightly by 0.5 percent, said Fernandes.

The figure of last year also indicated that visitors from Chinese mainland, Thailand and South Korea scored a surge of 4.6 percent, 17.8 percent and 11.5 percent respectively.

Fernandes noted that the number of overnight-stay visitors in Macao exceeded 13,000,000 last year, constituting 48.4 percent of the overall visitors and marking a 5 percent increase.