Tourism | Package tour visitors down one-quarter

The number of package tour visitors to Macau totaled 532,000 in January 2017, marking a decrease of 6.7 percent year-on-year and about one-quarter from the previous month, December 2016, according to information released yesterday by the Statistics and Census Service.

Analyzed by place of origin, package tour visitors from mainland China (402,000) dropped by nine percent year-on-year, while those from South Korea (43,000) and Taiwan (33,000) rose by 21.3  and 4.7 percent respectively.

Due to the fact that the Chinese Lunar New Year fell partly in January this year – as opposed to entirely in February last year – outbound residents using the services of travel agencies increased by 14.8 percent year-on-year to 117,000.

Those traveling on package tours increased by more than 25 percent year-on-year to 50,000, with more than 60 percent of them heading to mainland China.

Meanwhile, the number of residents traveling on package tours to South Korea (8,100), Japan (2,600) and Thailand (2,300) surged by 120.2 percent, 272.8 percent and 221.2 percent year-on-year respectively.

There were 107 hotels and guesthouses operating at the end of January 2017, providing about 36,000 guest rooms, of which 5-star hotels accounted for 60 percent. The total number of guest rooms increased by 12.9 percent year-on-year, with that of 3-star hotels more than doubling.

In the month of January, some 1.04 million visitors stayed in these guest rooms, up by 15.6 percent year-on- year. Those originating from mainland China (679,000), South Korea (38,000) and Hong Kong (127,000) recorded double-digit growth of 17.1 percent, 35.9 percent and 12.9 percent respectively.