Tourism | Visitors on package tours climb 14.5% in July

Package tour visitors to Macau rose 14.5% year-on-year to 870,000 in July 2019, according to the latest data released by the Statistics and Census Service, with the growth fueled by visitors from mainland China. The growth in July was lower than the monthly averages seen in the first half of 2019.

Visitors from the mainland on package tours to Macau totaled 714,000 in July, representing a rise of about 19% compared to last year. Package tour visitors from Taiwan (63,000) and Hong Kong (12,000) rose by 2.7% and 19.1% in the same period, while those from South Korea (45,000) dropped 9% year-on-year.

In the first seven months of 2019, there were approximately 5.78 million package tour visitors to Macau, which corresponds to 15.1% growth year-on-year.

Meanwhile, the number of outbound residents using the services of travel agencies reached 135,000 in July, up by 2.9% year- on-year. Residents traveling under their own arrangements edged down by 0.6% to 88,000, with those visiting Hong Kong (14,000) and Taiwan (14,000) fell by 18.2% and 6.3% respectively. Those traveling to mainland China under their own arrangements inched up 0.9% year-on-year to 38,000.

Meanwhile, residents travelling on package tours grew by 10.5% to 46,000, on account of a 13.9% increase from those visiting mainland China (36,000).

In the first seven months of 2019, outbound residents using the services of travel agencies totaled 964,000, up by 7.7% year-on- year.

In the same period, the number of guests at hotels and guesthouses increased 1.8% year-on-year to 8.16 million. The average occupancy rate of Macau’s 119 hotels and guesthouses, as of the end of July, rose by 1.1 percentage points to 91.4%, with the average length of stay of guests holding steady at 1.5 nights. DB