Macau International Airport reports increased destinations, flight frequency and passenger numbers
Macau International Airport recorded sustainable growth of
passenger arrival in 1H07 due to an increase of new routes and flight frequency.
Passenger volume from Jan-07 to Jun-07 accumulated to 2.7 million passengers,
a 16.83% year-on-year increase.
Summer holiday passenger traffic was particularly strong, with a 27.9% increase in passenger numbers in Jun-07. Visitors from both Taiwan and Mainland China steadily increased, with visitors from Mainland China increasing 13.9% year-on-year.
Macau International Airport has encouraged airlines to expand services by organizing promotion and offering incentives. In order to minimize the risk of the reliance of a single market, MIA has also been actively drawing LCC operations to the airport, exploring and expanding new market segments. The new travelling concept has proved to be a success especially in providing alternative travel for local residents.
According to the recent statistics by Macau Government Tourist Office, international market arrivals have surged more than 40% year-on-year during the last three years, with Southeast Asia region showing exceptionally strong performance and recorded an increase of 68.3% during the first five months. Malaysia, for the first time, became the fourth visitor generating market, showing a healthy progress towards diversification of source markets. Tourists from Southeast Asia by air has largely increased, up 46.87%; Kuala Lumpur and Singapore have become the two popular destinations, a rise of 93.98% and 41.41% respectively.
With AirAsia's operation in Macau, the airline already brought over 1 million passengers. The airline is currently operating four daily services to two destinations in Malaysia with passenger traffic of over 470,000 passengers. Bangkok route recorded a slight fall in the first quarter compared to same period last year due to the occurrence of political instability in Thailand.
With numerous upcoming international conferences and events in Macau, the need for more air traffic will be anticipated. Home base airline, Air Macau commenced services to Osaka and Viva Macau commenced services to Pusan, South Korea in Jul-07. AirAsia, after the launch of Sabah route, will be followed by a daily service to Johor Bahru, Malaysia departing from Macau.
MIA, in order to support airlines to maintain and capture a larger market share of Taiwanese business travellers and to develop its mainland leisure market, has initiated trade promotions in China, promoting the ease of travelling from Macau among both business and leisure market. In the first half of the year, it completed promotion in Dongguan, Wuxi, Suzhou, Kunshan and Hangzhou.