Total visitor arrivals to Hong Kong exceeded 2.12 million in September, up 15.9% on the same month last year, the Tourism Board says. The rise took the cumulative total for January to September to over 20.36 million, up 9.6% on the same period last year.

All long- and short-haul market regions achieved notable gains, with the Mainland enjoying the greatest rise in arrivals to over 1.1 million, up 22.1% on the same month last year. Of the Mainland arrivals, 51% travelled under the Individual Visit Scheme, a year-on-year rise of 35.8%.

Double-digit growth was also registered in Australia, New Zealand & the South Pacific (18.8%) and in Europe, Africa & the Middle East (10.2%).

While the Americas, North Asia, Taiwan and South & Southeast Asia registered growth of 8.7%, 8.7%, 8.5% and 7.1%.

As for the individual source markets, the growth trend of several long-haul markets remained strong. These included Canada (26.2%), the UK (16.3%), France (12.4%), Australia (16.5%) and New Zealand (32.3%), which consistently registered double-digit increases in the past few months.

Meanwhile, South Korea and the Philippines remained the star performers among the short-haul markets, up 28.4% and 23.4%.

Over 1.23 million September arrivals, or 58.3%, stayed in the city for at least one night, with the remainder classified as same-day in-town visitors.