Tourism sector ends 2016 on high note

There were 2,814,450 visitor arrivals in December 2016, according to information released yesterday by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC), up by 6.8 percent year-on- year and 8.7 percent month-to-month.

Overnight visitors surged by 16.5 percent year-on-year to around 1.55 million (about 55 percent of the total), while same-day visitors decreased by 3.1 percent to around 1,264,000.

The average length of stay for all visitors to the territory held steady in December at 1.2 days, while it stood at 2.1 days on average for the overnight category.

Visitors from mainland China increased 7.8 percent year-on-year to 1,785,764 in December, with those traveling under the Individual Visit Scheme (850,204) rising by 15.4 percent year-on-year. Mainland visitors were mainly from Guangdong Province (741,107), Hunan Province (83,108) and Fujian Province (67,362).

Meanwhile, visitors from Hong Kong (604,872), Taiwan (94,686) and South Korea (70,740) went up by 2.3 percent, 11.2 percent and 28.9 percent. Long-haul visitors from the U.S. (18,698) and Canada (7,278) increased year-on-year, while those from Australia (9,308) and the U.K. (4,631) decreased.

In December, visitor arrivals by land (1,527,466), sea (1,064,311) and air (222,673) rose by 3.6 percent, 10.1 percent and 14.8 percent, respectively, year-on-year.

For the whole of 2016, visitor arrivals totaled 30,950,336, according to DSEC, up slightly by 0.8 percent year- on-year. Overnight visitors went up by 9.8 percent to 15,703,616, constituting some 50.7 percent of total visitors, while same-day visitors decreased by 7.1 percent to 15,246,720.

Analyzed by place of origin, visitors from mainland China edged up by 0.3 percent to around 20.45 million, with around 44 percent coming from Guangdong Province. Visitors from South Korea (662,321) and Taiwan (1,074,525) grew by 19.5 percent and 8.8 percent respectively, while those from Hong Kong (6,419,839) decreased by 1.8 percent.