Chinese tourists top spenders

The biggest spenders at local shops are unquestionably mainland Chinese tourists, who spend with a will while they’re in town.

Per-capita spending of Mainland visitors in the third quarter of this year was MOP 2,026, significantly higher than the average of MOP 1,633 spent by all visitors during the same period, according to figures released yesterday by the Statistics and Census Service.

While the average overnight visitor from the Mainland splashed out MOP 3,390 during the stay in Macau, day-trippers spent less enthusiastically, spending an average MOP 823 each. Either way, almost two thirds of that money was spent in the city’s shops.

Visitors from mainland China were the only ones spending more money shopping rather than on accommodation or transport. The third quarter figures show that Mainlanders shelled out 61 percent of their per-capita spending on shopping, well ahead of tourists from Southeast Asian countries, who came in second with 33 percent of their per-capita spend going towards shopping.

Tourists from Hong Kong, Americas, Europe and Oceania spent much more on non-shopping items, accounting for over 80 percent of their respective per-capita spend.

The reason behind the sharp rise in sales among Chinese tourists could be the total volume of luxury goods they purchase, such as jewellery and watches.

According to yesterday’s data, Mainland visitors spent 24 percent of their per-capita shopping on these items, with clothing and local food products accounting each for 17 percent of their spending.
Despite the tourist price index remaining almost unchanged in the last quarter, jewellery prices went up by 2.7 percent, on account of rising prices of gold jewellery.

In contrast, visitors from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia went to local shops looking for food products.

That places Chinese visitors at number one in the league table of big spenders visiting Macau.
Last year some 13.2 million Mainlanders visited Macau, up 20 percent from the previous year, with most staying for at least one night.

That number is only going to rise this year. Chinese tourism abroad has increased exponentially since 2000, and projections indicate that it will continue to rise, since only a small percentage of the total Mainland population travel overseas. Plus, Chinese travellers preferably stay close to home.

In the first nine months of 2011, over 11.7 million visitors from mainland China travelled to Macau, 19.8 percent more than in the same period of 2010.

Judging from the monthly growth, Macau is likely to welcome some 15 million Mainland tourists this year.Overall, the total spending (excluding gaming expenses) of visitors reached MOP 12.1 billion in the third quarter of 2011, up by 25 percent from a year earlier. From January to September, total spending of visitors reached MOP 32 billion.

Total spending and per-capita spending of visitors for the third quarter were extrapolated from 47,300 effective questionnaires collected.

Source - macaudailytimes.com.mo