Tourism | Package tour visitors slightly increased

Visitors on package tours totaled 677,000 in April 2017, up by 14.5 percent year-on-year and 4.3 percent month-to-month, according to the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).

The DSEC report indicated that package tour visitors from mainland China (536,000), South Korea (41,000) and Taiwan (32,000) rose by 13.8 percent, 41.3 percent and 13.2 percent respectively year-
on-year.

In the first four months of 2017, visitors on package tours totaled 2,409,000, an increase of 5.1 percent year-on-year.

Considering the effect of Easter moving from March last year to April this year, outbound residents using services of travel agencies rose by 20.5 percent year-on-year to 112,000.

Residents travelling on package tours in April (46,000) surged by 32.2 percent year-on-year, with those going to mainland China (34,000) soaring by 44.6 percent, however those travelling to South Korea (3,500) dropped by 4.1 percent.

In the first four months of 2017, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totaled 446,000, up by 9.8 percent year-on-year.

There were 107 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of April 2017.

The number of guest rooms within Macau increased by 13.4 percent year-on-year to 37,000. Of this figure,  5-star hotel rooms totaled 22,000, accounting for 60.3 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of guests at hotels & guesthouses in April 2017 increased by 17.3 percent year-on-year to 1,083,000, with those from mainland China (678,000), Hong Kong (168,000) and Taiwan (41,000) rising by 10.4 percent, 44.6 percent and 6.2 percent respectively;.

Guests from South Korea soared by 94.1 percent to 37,000.

The average length of stay stood at 1.4 nights.

The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses for April went up by 6.4 percentage points year-on-
year to 86.1 percent, with that of 4-star hotels (89.8 percent) rising by 6.1 percentage points.

The rates of 3-star and 5-star hotels also grew by 2.4 percentage points and 6.5 percentage points respectively year-on-year.

In the first four months of 2017, the total number of guests of hotels & guesthouses was 4,129,000, up by 14.6 percent year-on-
year.

During the first quarter, the average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses stood at 83.8 percent, up by 5.5 percentage points.

The average length of stay of guests during this period held steady at 1.4 nights when compared with the same period of last year.

Visitor-guests accounted for 72.4 percent of the total overnight visitors in the first quarter, up slightly by 0.7 percentage points year-on-year.