How visitors reach and move around Macau

Who visits Macau and for how long

The Statistics and Census Service counted 34,928,650 visitor arrivals in 2024, 23.8% more than in 2023. A small majority stayed no night: 18,884,882 were same-day visitors and 16,043,768 overnight. The average stay was 1.2 days, and 2.3 days for those who slept over. Macao News, citing police data, put the 2024 total at 88.6% of the 2019 level.

Most come from very near. Visitors from mainland China numbered 24,491,424, and almost half of them, 11,985,383, came from the nine Pearl River Delta cities of the Greater Bay Area. Hong Kong supplied 7,179,722. International visitors, a separate count, rose by 66% to 2,423,093.

The pattern held through the recovery. In 2023 the yearbook recorded 28,213,003 visitors, of whom 50.4% stayed overnight; mainland visitors made up 67.5% of the total, and 55.8% of them travelled individually under the Facilitated Individual Travel scheme. Residents travel the other way too: 418,500 of them used travel agencies for trips abroad in 2023.

Beds are mostly in large hotels. At the end of 2023 Macau had 149 hotel premises with 48,405 rooms, according to the Macao Government Tourism Office's figures in the yearbook, and more than 60% of the rooms were in five-star hotels. Average occupancy over 2023 was 81.5%, and guests stayed 1.7 nights. Budget accommodation offered 1,175 rooms. The British government's travel advice notes that visitors must stay in licensed accommodation and can be fined up to 3,000 patacas for staying in an illegal guesthouse.

How travellers cross into Macau

In 2024, 79.5% of visitors arrived by land, 11.7% by sea and 8.8% by air. Five land routes connect Macau with the mainland: the Border Gate at the top of the peninsula; the checkpoint at Qingmao; the Zhuhai-Macao Cross-border Industrial Zone; the Macau border crossing area at Hengqin; and the Zhuhai side of the Hong Kong to Zhuhai to Macao Bridge. The Border Gate alone took 10,538,358 visitors in 2023. The bridge, open since 2018, also carries traffic from Hong Kong; 6,177,379 visitors came across its Hong Kong side in 2023.

The sea route is older. Ferries run from the Outer Harbour terminal, opened in 1993, and from the Taipa Ferry Terminal, opened in June 2017, to Hong Kong's Sheung Wan and its airport, to Shenzhen and to Zhuhai; a small Inner Harbour terminal serves Wanzai across the channel. By the end of 2023 the Outer Harbour ran about 54 sailings a day to Hong Kong and Taipa about 45. Both terminals have a helicopter pad, and helicopters fly to Hong Kong and Shenzhen.

Macau International Airport opened in 1995 at the eastern end of Taipa, its runway on an artificial island joined to the apron by two taxiway bridges. It handled 5.15 million passengers in 2023, and Air Macau is based there.

What entry rules visitors meet

Macau keeps its own immigration controls, separate from the mainland's, and every traveller between Macau and the mainland or Hong Kong passes a border check. The government grants visa-free entry to nationals of 81 countries and regions for 14 to 90 days, and the British government's travel advice gives British citizens up to six months without a visa. A traveller going on into mainland China needs a Chinese visa before reaching the border, and one who enters Macau from the mainland needs a double or multiple-entry visa to go back. Passports must be valid for 90 days beyond departure.

The British advice describes crime as low, with pickpocketing in crowded places and around casinos late at night, and records no recent history of terrorism in Macau. Entry to casinos is limited to those aged 21 and over, according to Wikipedia's article on gambling in Macau.

The same advice warns that Macau does not recognise dual nationality, so a British and Chinese national may be treated as Chinese, and that the national security law applies to acts in and outside Macau. Ride-hailing through Uber is illegal. A British licence needs an international driving permit, and traffic keeps to the left.

How visitors get around the peninsula and islands

Three bridges cross from the peninsula to Taipa: the Nobre de Carvalho Bridge of October 1974, 2.5 kilometres long, the 4.4-kilometre Friendship Bridge of April 1994, and the 2.1-kilometre Sai Van Bridge, completed in December 2004. A fourth, the Macau Bridge, opened in 2024, according to Wikipedia's article on Macau. Cotai, the reclaimed land between Taipa and Coloane, joins the two islands, and the Lotus Flower Bridge runs from Cotai to Hengqin.

Buses carried 214 million passengers on 86 routes in 2023, and the casino hotels run free shuttle buses of their own. The Light Rapid Transit's Taipa line opened in December 2019 with 11 stations through Taipa and Cotai, linking Macau's ports of entry by sea, land and air; on 8 December 2023 it was extended across the lower deck of the Sai Van Bridge to Barra on the peninsula, giving 12 stations over 12.5 kilometres and a train every 7.5 to 10 minutes. At the end of 2023 there were 1,220 licensed black taxis and 300 special taxis.

What the old routes of the peninsula pass

The Historic Centre of Macao follows a line through the old city, from the A-Ma Temple, a Ming-era temple of four main structures near the southern tip, past churches and squares to the façade of St. Paul's. That façade is what fires left of a Jesuit church begun in 1602; the yearbook counts three fires, the last in 1835. Beside it, the Mount Fortress, built between 1617 and 1626, now houses the Museum of Macao.

The churches mark the city's age. St. Anthony's, built by the Jesuits between 1558 and 1560, is the oldest and is known locally as the Wedding Church; St. Augustine's dates from 1591 and St. Dominic's from 1587, and every 13 May a procession leaves St. Dominic's for Penha Hill. On Guia Hill, the highest point of the peninsula, the chapel of 1622 holds a mural found in 1996, and the lighthouse beside it first shone in 1865.

The Chinese city sits among them. The Pou Chai Monastery, also called Kun Iam Tong, holds paintings and calligraphy, and the treaty between the Qing government and the United States was signed in its garden on 3 July 1844. Lin Fong Temple, built under the Ming, is dedicated to Tin Hau. The Macau Tower, opened on 19 December 2001, rises 338 metres, with an observation level at 223 metres.

How the casino resorts are laid out

The resorts sit on reclaimed land, in two clusters. The older group stands on the Outer Harbour fills of the peninsula, ZAPE from the 1920s and 1930s and NAPE from the 1980s, which Macao News reports were meant for housing, schools and hospitals before casinos took them over; the Sands Macao opened there in 2004. The newer group lines Cotai, the six square kilometres filled between Taipa and Coloane in the 1990s and 2000s, where the Venetian Macao opened in 2007. Under a pledge made in 2015, no gaming may go on land reclaimed in the region's new waters, and the architect Thomas Daniell told Macao News that Beijing wants the new reclamations to serve residents' daily life.

The six operators also have a part in the old city. The government's task force works with the six resort operators on reviving six historical areas: the Mount Fortress garden, the Barra district near Doca D. Carlos I, the Iec Long firecracker factory, the Lai Chi Vun shipyards, the pedestrian zone of Rua da Felicidade and the area around Almeida Ribeiro Avenue, according to the yearbook.

Where the museums of Macau tell its story

The Museum of Macao occupies the old tower of the Mount Fortress, which served the Jesuits and later the meteorological service. The Grand Prix Museum, opened in 1993 and reopened after an expansion that began in July 2017, fills four storeys and some 16,000 square metres with the cars and motorcycles of past races; it received 132,331 visitors in 2023. The Dom Pedro V Theatre of 1860, with 276 seats in a shell-shaped hall, received 101,531 visitors that year. The Macau Tower's indoor deck, at 223 metres, gives views of up to 55 kilometres. At the end of 2023, 1,761 people held tourist guide licences, between them working in languages including Cantonese, Mandarin, English, Portuguese, Indonesian, Thai and Korean.

What Taipa and Coloane offer beyond the casinos

South of the Cotai resorts the islands are quieter. Pastry shops and snack stalls cluster in the old district of Taipa, as they do along Almeida Ribeiro Avenue on the peninsula, and the yearbook names almond cakes, egg rolls, peanut candy and dried meats among the local specialities. Macanese dishes such as African chicken, bacalhau balls, stuffed crab shells and stewed knuckle with red beans are served across the territory.

Sixteen trails, 37 kilometres in all, run over the hills of Taipa and Coloane, from the 1,150-metre Oscar Trail to the 8,100-metre Coloane Trail. Seac Pai Van Country Park on Coloane holds the Giant Panda Pavilion, and the Taipa-Coloane wetland reserve is watched by bird watchers from November to April, when migrants are present. Two industrial sites are open as heritage: the former Iec Long Firecracker Factory on Taipa and the shipyards at Lai Chi Vun on Coloane, built in the 1950s and idle since the 1990s.

When the weather and the calendar suit a visit

Wikipedia's geography of Macau describes autumn, from the end of September through October, as sunny, warm and the most comfortable season, and March and April as moist and foggy. Summer, May to September, is hot and wet, and typhoons arrive between May and November, most often from July to September. The British government advises that public offices close when the No. 8 typhoon signal is raised. Winter, from November to February, is mainly dry.

The calendar adds its own crowds: Macao News counted about 325,000 visitors between 30 December 2024 and New Year's Day 2025. The International Fireworks Display Contest, first held in 1989, runs in September and October on the seafront by the Macau Tower. The Grand Prix closes off the streets of the Guia Circuit in late November, and the International Marathon, over 42.195 kilometres from the peninsula to Taipa and Coloane, follows in December.

Other fixtures fill the gaps. The Lunar New Year brings performances in the districts and fireworks over the water; in 2023 the Macao Government Tourism Office staged them on 24 and 28 January and 5 February. The Macao Arts Festival runs in spring, the International Music Festival in October and the Dragon Boat Races on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, and the Macau Food Festival, according to UNESCO's profile of the city, drew more than 800,000 people in 2016.