New HKZM bridge drives up visits to Macau

The first full month of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau (HKZM) bridge being opened saw a 15.3% year-on-year increase in visitor arrivals to Macau.

The Macau Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) reported November visits reaching 3.27 million, a 3.6% increase from the previous month. Of the 2.31 million who traveled by land to visit the Special Administrative Region, about 437,000 passed through the HKZM bridge, which opened to the public last October 24.

The census agency also reported same-day visitors increasing 26.9% from the same period last year, to 1.68 million. Overnight visitors rose 5.1% year on year to 1.59 million. The average length of stay of visitors remained the same, at 1.2 days, but overnight visitors increased their length of stay by 0.1 day, to 2.2 days.

About 70% of the visitors, or 2.28 million, were from Mainland China. Of these, 1.06 million traveled through the Individual Visit Scheme, 19.1% more than in November 2017.