Macau Package Tour Arrivals Soars by 70.8%

Written on December 15, 2007 by admin

The number of visitor arrivals in package tours, in light of the National Day holidays, reached 369,056 in October 2007, up notably by 70.8% year-on-year. Visitors from Mainland China (255,675), Hong Kong (31,929) and Taiwan, China (24,117) recorded remarkable growth of 65.3%, 191.2% and 36.6% respectively compared with October 2006. In the first ten months of 2007, visitors arrived in package tours surged by 44.5% over the same period of 2006 to 3,342,966.

In October, the number of Macao residents travelling in package tours decreased by 38.0% year-on-year to 12,144. Mainland China, Thailand and Republic of Korea were the three most popular tour itineraries, which accounted for 67.7%, 7.9% and 5.3% of the total respectively. In the first ten months of 2007, Macao residents travelling in package tours dropped by 23.6% over the same period of 2006 to 170,777.

Meanwhile, 27,234 residents travelled under own arrangements using services provided by travel agencies, up slightly by 1.1% over October 2006. Hong Kong (32.1%), Mainland China (29.1%) and Taiwan, China (20.3%) were the major destinations. In the first ten months of 2007, Macao residents travelled under such arrangements increased by 9.7% compared with the same period of 2006 to 331,421.

At the end of October 2007, the total number of guest rooms available in the hotel sector increased by 3,321 (+26.7%) from a year ago to 15,740 rooms.

In October 2007, a total of 490,271 guests checked into hotels and similar establishments, representing a year-on-year growth of 18.9%. With the attraction of several major events held in October, the average hotel occupancy rate soared by 5.7 percentage points to 79.3%, with 3-star hotels leading at 82.4%; in addition, the average length of stay of hotel guests extended substantially by 0.43 night to 1.62 nights. The majority of the guests came from Mainland China (46.3%) and Hong Kong (27.9%). Number of hotel guests totalled 4,706,089 in the first ten months of 2007, up by 25.3% over the same period of 2006.

In the first ten months of 2007, hotel guests (excluding Macao residents) accounted for 42.6% of the total number of tourists, up from 41.0% in the same period.