Package tour visitors down 11.9 percent

Package tour visitors to Macau decreased by 11.9 percent year-on-year to 380,419 in October of this year, according to information released yesterday by the Statistics and Census Services (DSEC).
Visitors on package tours from mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong fell by 9.8 percent, 24.6 percent and 35.3 percent respectively, while those from Japan increased by 6.7 percent.
According to the DSEC, in the first ten months of this year, visitor arrivals on package tours dropped by 6.7 percent year-on-year to 3,665,078.
The number of local residents travelling outbound on package tours in October decreased by 2 percent year-on-year to 15,986, with mainland, Taiwan and Japan being the most popular tour itineraries.
In the first ten months of this year, residents travelling outbound on package tours dropped by 13.8 percent year-on-year to 160,778.
Meanwhile, outbound residents travelling under own arrangements using services of travel agencies surged by 56.4 percent year-on-year to 46,580, with Hong Kong, mainland and Taiwan being the main destinations, an increase of 19.1 percent year-on-year for the first 10 months of this year.
At the end of October of this year, the total number of guest rooms available at the hotel sector increased by 1,467, an increase of 8.6 percent from a year earlier to 18,447 rooms.
During the same period, a total of 581,192 guests checked into hotels and guest-houses, up by 8.3 percent year-on-year, with the majority coming from mainland and Hong Kong.
Thus, the average hotel occupancy rate rose by 2.5 percent year-on-year to 74 percent, with 3-star hotels leading at 78.7 percent.
Furthermore, the average length of stay of hotel guests increased by 0.05 night to 1.5 nights, while the cumulative number of hotel guests increased slightly by 0.6 percent in the first ten months of this year to 5,386,282.
For the first ten months of this year, visitor-guests of hotels accounted for 61 percent of the total number of tourists, up from 57.5 percent in the corresponding period of last year.