Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitor arrivals decreased slightly by 0.6% year-on-year to 2,681,141 in August 2012; same-day visitors (1,346,349) accounted for 50.2% of the total. The average length of stay of visitors stood at 1.0 day, down by 0.1 day year-on-year, with the overnight and same-day visitors staying 1.8 days and 0.2 day respectively.

Analysed by place of residence, visitors from Mainland China increased by 4.1% year-on-year to 1,635,080, coming mostly from Guangdong Province (789,957), Fujian Province (77,800) and Hunan Province (64,274); Mainland visitors travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme rose by 10.6% to 772,534. Visitors from the Republic of Korea (48,035), Japan (42,506) and Indonesia (31,549) increased by 6.4%, 9.4% and 23.1% year-on-year respectively, while those from Hong Kong (677,074) and Taiwan, China (106,263) decreased by 10.3% and 8.5% respectively. Long-haul visitors from Europe (22,592), the Americas (21,938) and Oceania (7,989) also decreased by 2.3%, 9.9% and 2.0% respectively.

In the first eight months of 2012, visitor arrivals totalled 18,703,119, with the year-on-year growth slowing to 1.1%. Visitors from Mainland China (11,202,643), the Republic of Korea (298,850) and Japan (283,771) increased by 6.6%, 8.3% and 14.6% respectively. On the contrary, visitors from Hong Kong (4,790,983) and Taiwan, China (719,917) decreased by 7.8% and 14.6% respectively.