The Macao Special Administrative Region recorded 20.94 million visitor arrivals in the first half of this year, a year-on-year increase of 9.0 percent, official data showed.

Same-day visitors (12.88 million) and overnight visitors (8.05 million) rose by 15.3 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively, according to a statement from Macao’s Statistics and Census Bureau.

Overnight visitors stayed for an average of 2.3 days (55 hours), unchanged from the first half of last year.

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Same-day visitors accounted for 61.5 percent of all visitors between January and June. On average, Macao recorded 115,715 visitor arrivals per day in the first half of this year.

Visitor arrivals from the Chinese mainland rose by 11.0 percent to 15.28 million, accounting for 72.9 percent of total visitor arrivals.

Visitors from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (3.65 million) and Taiwan region (575,895) rose by 0.3 percent and 24.7 percent, respectively.

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Foreign visitor arrivals increased by 6.0 percent to 1.42 million, or 6.8 percent of all visitor arrivals.

South Korean (284,258), Philippine (270,441) and Thai visitors (122,494) were Macao’s top three international visitor segments. Among them, visitors from Thailand recorded the largest year-on-year increase, at 51.4 percent.

In June, visitor arrivals fell by 3.1 per cent year-on-year to 2.8 million. The central government has designated Macao a World Centre of Tourism and Leisure.

The Macau Post Daily is a media partner of China Daily.