Statistics | Tourism: Package tour visitors down by a quarter

The number of tourists who arrived in Macau on package tours declined by more than a quarter in November 2015, compared with the same month last year, according to information released by the Statistics and Census Service.
The number of visitors on package tours in November totaled 769,000, indicating a decrease of 26.6 percent year-­on-year, having fallen  6.9 percent from October.
Analyzed by place of origin, the number of package tour visitors from Mainland China (622,000) dropped by 28 percent year-on-­year, while those from South Korea (29,000), Hong Kong (18,000) and Taiwan (37,000) fell by 19.2 percent, 27.5 percent and 39.7 percent, respectively.
In the same period, however, the number of package tour visitors from Japan rose by 27.1 percent to approximately 17,000.
The number of outbound residents on package tours also declined by 1.3 percent year-­on-year to 49,000, with preferred destinations including  Mainland China, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Broadly speaking, the number of outbound residents making use of travel agencies constituted around 119,000 in November, down 9.6 percent from 2014.
In Macau, the number of visitors checking into hotels and guesthouses amounted to 932,000 in November, a slight increase of 3.3 percent year-­on-year.
While the number of guests from Mainland China (581,000) remains down by 1.6 percent compared with last year, those from Hong Kong (132,000) surged by 33.8 percent.
The average duration of stay for guests rose by 0.1 nights year-­on-year to 1.5, representing a marginally longer stay per visitor.
In the first eleven months of 2015, the number of guests totaled 9,432,000, down by 4 percent from the same period in 2014. Staff reporter