ABSTRACT
The First Wave of Chinese private outbound travel started with visits to Chinese friends and relatives in Hong Kong and Macao in 1983. Over the past 3 decades, Macao has remained the primary destination for Chinese outbound travel along with Hong Kong. Chinese economic surge, coupled with Macao’s gaming liberalization in 2002 and the Central Government’s the “Individual Visit Scheme” (IVS) in 2003, has completely restructured tourism in Macao. In 2003, Mainland Chinese tourists overtook Hong Kong as Macao’s largest source of visitors. A total of 5.7 million visitors from the Mainland were recorded in 2003 compared with less than 1 million in 1998. Since then, Mainland has been the top source market for Macao, constituting 63.5% of Macao’s tourist arrivals in 2013. This chapter will focus on Chinese outbound to Macao with an emphasis on recent decade (2002-2013). Data used for analysis are derived from Macao Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).
