Triple record for tours in November

With December still to be accounted for, 2011 is already the best year ever for the local tourism sector with 6.5 million visitors on package tours, up by 24.7 percent

Package tour visitors reached a new record high in November, thanks to a surge in mainland Chinese tourists, and pushed arrivals in 2011 past the total registered in the previous year.
According to the latest data released by the Statistics and Census Service last week, organised tours brought over 767,200 tourists to Macau in November, up 70.3 percent year-on-year.
November’s figure overtook the previous highest ever figure of almost 713,400, from last August. The monthly record has almost doubled since August 2007, when it was at less than 387,000.
The highest ever number of visitors from mainland China, more than 574,200 (up 79 percent year-on-year), was the main reason behind the November increase. China still accounts for a huge majority of total arrivals (74.8 percent).
But other markets are growing even faster, with Taiwan (over 45,500) and South Korea (just short of 27,500) seeing their tour visitors more than double in November.
Package tour group numbers from South Korea have soared since December 2010, following the launch of a Seoul-Macau route by a low cost airline.
On the contrary, visitors from Japan (less than 21,700) decreased by 4.1 percent. Japanese visitors abroad have declined since the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and following nuclear disaster in the country.

Best year

With December still to be accounted for, 2011 is already the best year ever for the local tourism sector. In the first eleven months, visitors on package tours increased by 24.7 percent year-on-year to 6.5 million, surpassing the annual total of 5.7 million in 2010.
And Macau residents are also travelling more but most prefer to do so on their own. Between January and November outbound residents on package tours decreased by 4.2 percent year-on-year to about 215,300, while almost 581,300 made their own travel arrangements.
Visiting Macau is becoming more expensive, as the tourist price index increased by 18.9 percent year-on-year in the last quarter of 2011. This figure was much higher than the 6.7 percent inflation registered in November.
The spike was mostly due to higher accommodation prices, the Statistic and Census Services said yesterday. Hotel rooms were 35 percent more expensive, restaurant meals rose 19.2 percent and jewellery also become dearer.
Yet the tourism industry expects business to grow even more this year.
The president of the Travel Industry Council, Andy Wu Keng Kuong, forecasts a double-digit growth for the Chinese New Year. “Most hotels are 80 to 90 percent booked already. This should be a more fruitful year in terms of inbound travelling,” he told TDM News.

Busy hotels

The visitor boom is trickling down to the hospitality industry, as hotels and guesthouses received 7.8 million guests in the first eleven months of 2011, up by just 10.9 percent year-on-year.
Local hotels seem to have little to complain about, as they filled an average 83.6 percent of their rooms in the January-November period, an occupancy rate 4.5 points higher year-on-year.
But Wu called on the government to sign an agreement with mainland China to further protect travellers’ rights.
Last August tourism boards from mainland China and Macau implemented specific measures to tackle irregularities in the industry, including the practices of ‘zero-fee tour packages’ and ‘forced shopping’.
And last week the Macau Government Tourist Office director João Costa Antunes pledged to “take another step at an industry level, by establishing agreements with private operators”.
One sector still struggling to make the most of the tourism boom is aviation, despite a late recovery at the end of last year.
The number of people who used the Macau International Airport increased to 359,300 in December, for the seventh consecutive month. But a dismal start to 2011 means that the infrastructure still closed the year with a slight loss of 33,800 passengers.
The volume of airfreight dropped much more, down 24 percent, to just 39.5 million kilos.

V.Q.