Tourism | Package tour visitors bounce from Sept

Information released by the Statistics and Census Service indicates that although the number of visitors to Macau travelling on package tours (804,000) for October was down by 19.8 percent year-on-year, the figure is up by 11.8 percent compared with the previous month.
For the first ten months of 2015, the number of visitors on package tours totaled 8,222,000, down by 9 percent when compared with the same period of 2014.
Compared with October last year, the number of tourists travelling on organized group tours from major destinations was mostly down across the board. Those arriving from mainland China (669,000) tumbled by 17.9 percent year-on-year, while those from the Republic of Korea (23,000), Hong Kong (17,000) and Taiwan (40,000) dropped by 36 percent, 27.9 percent and 38.4 percent, respectively.
Visitors on package tours from Japan, however, increased by 11 percent year-on-year to a total of 14,000.
There were 104 hotels and guesthouses operating by the end of October, providing 32,000 guest rooms, up by 13.1 percent year-on-
year. With a number of new hotels commencing operations, the number of guest rooms in four-star hotels increased by 38.7 percent year-on-year to 7,700.
The number of tourists checking into hotels and guesthouses totaled 896,000 for October 2015, up by 4.2 percent year-on-year. Guests from mainland China (586,000) and Hong Kong (116,000) increased by 5.2 percent and 20.3 percent, respectively. The average length of stay rose by 0.1 nights year-on-year to a new high of 1.5 nights.
As for outbound Macau residents, October 2015 saw a 4.6-percent drop year-on-year in those using travel agency services. Based on the share of total visitors, mainland China again overtook other destinations by a large margin (76.9 percent), while Korea (5.7 percent) and Taiwan (5.1 percent) fared worse.
In the first ten months of this year, the number of outbound residents using travel agency services totaled 1,260,000, down by 0.5 percent year-on-year.