Tourism | Package tour visitors drop one-quarter in CNY February

Visitors to Macau on package tours totaled 597,000 in February 2018, according to the latest data provided by the Statistics and Census Bureau. This figure is up by 8.8 percent year-on-year but down by 25.6 percent month-to-month. Meanwhile, in the first two months of 2018, visitors on package tours totaled almost 1.4 million, a surge of 29.3 percent year- on-year.

Package tour visitors from mainland China (450,000) and Taiwan (56,000) rose by 11.6 percent and 55.3 percent respectively year-on-year in February, while those from South Korea (46,000) dropped by 6.1 percent.
Attributable to the long Lunar New Year holidays, outbound residents using services of travel agencies increased by 15.9 percent year-on-year to 131,000. Among them, residents travelling on package tours grew by 12.4 percent to 53,000, with those going to mainland China (37,000) rising by 10.5 percent.

In the first two months of 2018, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totaled 249,000, up by 9.8 percent year-on- year.

There were 115 hotels and guesthouses operating at the end of February 2018, an increase of seven year-on- year. The number of guest rooms rose by 6.4 percent year-on-year to 39,000, with 5-star hotel rooms rising by 8.5 percent to 24,000, accounting for 61.2 percent of the total.

In the first two months of 2018, guests of hotels and guesthouses totaled 2.21 million, up by 9.8 percent year-on-year. The average occupancy rate rose by 5.9 percentage points to 89.8 percent, while the average length of stay of guests increased by 0.1 nights year- on-year to 1.5 nights.