Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that number of visitor arrivals grew by 3.6% month-to-month to 659,407 in December 2020; however, the figure represented a year-on-year decline of 78.6%. Overnight visitors and same-day visitors totalled 390,300 and 269,107 respectively. The average length of stay of visitors went up by 0.3 day year-on-year to 1.5 days; the duration for overnight visitors (2.5 days) rose by 0.3 day, whereas that for same-day visitors (0.1 day) shortened by 0.1 day.
In terms of source of visitors, number of Mainland visitors fell by 71.0% year-on-year to 606,884, and 261,297 of them travelled under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS). Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area totalled 327,611, of whom 138,773 (42.4% of total) came from Zhuhai. Meanwhile, there were 46,786 visitors from Hong Kong and 5,685 from Taiwan.
For the whole year of 2020, number of visitor arrivals declined by 85.0% year-on-year to 5,896,848. Same-day visitors and overnight visitors stood at 3,074,811 (52.1% of total) and 2,822,037 (47.9%) respectively, indicating decreases of 85.2% and 84.9% year-on-year. The average length of stay of visitors went up by 0.2 day year-on-year to 1.4 days, with that of overnight visitors (2.8 days) rising by 0.6 day while that of same-day visitors (0.2 day) remaining unchanged.
Analysed by country/place, visitors from mainland China decreased by 83.0% year-on-year to 4,754,239 in 2020; among them, IVS visitors declined by 85.7% to 1,865,152. Visitors from the nine Pearl River Delta cities in the Greater Bay Area totalled 2,575,651, a drop of 77.4% year-on-year. Besides, visitors from Hong Kong (843,165) and Taiwan (104,124) fell by 88.5% and 90.2% year-on-year respectively. Analysed by checkpoint, there were 5,033,614 visitor arrivals by land in 2020, and 3,847,137 (76.4%) of them arrived through the Border Gate. Visitor arrivals by air and by sea added up to 436,936 and 426,298 respectively.