Tourism | Tour groups continue to decline

Visitors coming to Macau on package tours increased by 8.2 percent month-­to-month to 728,000 in August. The figures released by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) represent a year-on-year decline of 20.6 percent. Package tour visitors from mainland China (593,000) and Taiwan (42,000) decreased by 24.9 percent and 11.1 percent respectively year-on-year, while those from the Republic of Korea (32,000) surged by 146.3 percent. In the first eight months of 2016, visitors on package tours amounted to a figure of 4,831,000, a decrease by 28.5 percent year-on-year.
Outbound residents using the services of travel agencies totaled 109,000 in August, up by 1.5 percent month-to-month and down by 17.3 percent year-­on-year. Residents travelling on package tours decreased by 27.7 percent year-on-year to 41,000, which can be attributed to a 37 percent decrease in residents travelling to mainland China (28,000). The number of residents travelling to Taiwan (2,700) also dropped by 14 percent.
A total of 1,076,000 guests checked into hotels and guesthouses in August, up by 3.3 percent month-to-month and 7.7 percent year-on-year. Guests from mainland China (688,000), Hong Kong (178,000) and Taiwan (40,000) increased by 5.5 percent, 14.3 percent and 11.8 percent respectively year-­on-year. The average length of stay of guests held stable at 1.4 nights. The average occupancy rate of hotels and guesthouses reached 90 percent in August 2016, the highest record since February 2014.