Macau Witnesses Record Number of Visitors

Macau's visitor arrivals in October rose 19.6% from a year earlier to 2 million, setting a new record for a single month, according to the Chinese territory's government.

Visitors from mainland China rose 10.3% in October on year, while arrivals from Hong Kong jumped 36.7%. The numbers rose partly because two of China's national holidays were celebrated in October.

Macau - the only place in China with legal casino gambling - received 17.9 million visitors in the January-October period, up 15.9% from the same time last year, officials said.

The gambling industry predicts that Macau's tourism will continue to boom as local and foreign casino companies like Las Vegas Sands Corp., MGM Mirage Inc. and Wynn Resorts Ltd. finish building massive shopping, hotel and resort complexes.

The expanded scale of the casino business and relaxed travel arrangements with mainland China have doubled the size of Macau's tourism business over the past decade. In the early 1990s, Macau usually hosted less than 8 million visitors a year.

Since the territory returned to Chinese rule in 1999, it has been governed under a 'one country, two systems' formula, designed to allow it a wide degree of autonomy.