Package tour visitors down 36 percent

Information from the Statistics and Census Service showed that visitor arrivals in package tours continued to decline in July, down notably by 35.7% to 261,349 over the same period of last year.
Visitors in package tours from mainland China (163,255), Taiwan (19,887) and Japan (14,618) decreased respectively by 42.2 percent, 20.4 percent and 7.1 percent, while those from Hong Kong (26,146) increased by 7.1 percent.
In the first seven months of 2009, visitor arrivals in package tours fell by 10.1 percent year-on-year to 2,535,849.
In July this year, the number of Macau residents travelling outbound in package tours dropped by 25.1 percent year-on-year to 14,826.
Mainland China (62.9 percent), Taiwan (8.8 percent), and Singapore and Malaysia (7.2 percent) were among the most popular destinations.
Between January and July, local residents travelling in package tours decreased by 15.8 percent year-on-year to 106,464.
Meanwhile, 43,303 local residents travelled outbound without joining any package tour, up by 24.6 percent when compared to July 2008.
Mainland China (49.6 percent), Hong Kong (20.3 percent) and Taiwan (16.7 percent) were the main destinations.
During the first seven months this year, residents travelling under their own arrangements rose by 10.2 percent year-on-year to 239,930.
At the end of July, the total number of guest rooms available in the hotel sector increased by 1,879 or 11.5 percent from a year earlier to 18,152 rooms.
A total of 525,731 guests checked into hotels and similar establishments, down by 10.5 percent year-on-year, with the majority of guests coming from mainland China (43.3 percent) and Hong Kong (29.3 percent).
The average hotel occupancy rate fell by 10.8 percentage points year-on-year to 68.1 percent, with 4-star hotels leading at 71.7 percent.
The average length of stay of hotel guests increased by 0.13 night year-on-year to 1.49 nights. The cumulative number of hotel guests decreased by 4.3 percent in the first seven months of 2009 to 3,630,454.