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Macao ranked among top four cities for international visitors: Euromonitor

Macao welcomed 18.9 million international visitors in 2018

Macao was the fourth-most popular destination city for international visitors in 2018 – up by one place compared to the previous year’s ranking, according to Euromonitor International.

Euromonitor’s latest Top 100 City Destinations report was released at the beginning of December and said Macao welcomed 18.9 million international visitors in 2018.

In addition, the British market research company estimated Macao’s total international visitor tally for 2019 at 20.64 million visitors, or about 9.0 percent more than the year before, with the city overtaking London in the third position of the ranking, and only behind Hong Kong and Bangkok.

The annual report calculates the number of international visitors to about 400 cities around the world. It counts as an international visitor any person that arrives in a city from another jurisdiction and stays at least 24 hours but at most 12 months for any purpose, including business and pleasure; in the case of Macao, visitors from Mainland China, Hong Kong and the Taiwan region are also counted as international visitors.

The figures exclude same-day visitors, transit and cruise passengers.

The Euromonitor report made special mention of Hong Kong: it said the city was still the world’s biggest urban draw for international tourists, even though it estimated Hong Kong’s total international visitor tally for 2019 would stay at 26.7 million visitors, or 8.7 percent fewer than the year before, due to the social unrest in the city.

Official data compiled by the Statistics and Census Service of the Macao SAR Government indicates that in the first 11 months of  2019 there were more than 36.3 million visitors to the city, 12.7 percent more than in the corresponding period of 2018. A total of 71.1 percent of those visitors were from Mainland China, and about 17.1 million of the total were overnight visitors.