Macao's package tour visitors up by 14.5 pct in July

MACAO, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- Visitors on package tours to Macao increased by 14.5 percent year-on-year to 870,000 in July 2019, the special administrative region (SAR)'s statistic service said here on Friday.

File photo: VCG

The latest report from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that package tour visitors from Chinese mainland (714,000), Hong Kong SAR (12,000) and China's Taiwan region (63,000) rose by 19.0 percent, 19.1 percent and 2.7 percent respectively, while those from South Korea (45,000) dropped by 9.0 percent.

In the first seven months of 2019, there were 5,785,000 package tour visitors, a growth of 15.1 percent year-on-year, the DSEC report added.

There were 119 hotels and guesthouses operating at the end of July 2019, an increase of three year-on-year. The number of available guest rooms inched down by 0.2 percent year-on-year to 39,000, with rooms of four-star hotels (7,400) decreasing by 4.8 percent whereas those of five-star hotels (25,000) rising slightly by 0.2 percent.

A total of 1,252,000 guests checked into hotels and guesthouses in July 2019, up by 3.5 percent year-on-year. Guests coming from Chinese mainland (889,000) and South Korea (44,000) grew by 6.9 percent and 18.2 percent respectively, while those from Hong Kong SAR (148,000) and China's Taiwan region (41,000) dropped by 0.9 percent and 13.6 percent.

The average occupancy rate of hotels and guesthouses in July increased by 1.3 percentage points year-on-year to 93.2 percent. The rates of five-star hotels (94.0 percent) and four-star hotels (93.9 percent) rose by 1.3 percentage points and 1.2 percentage points respectively. The average length of stay of guests shortened by 0.1 night year-on-year to 1.4 nights.

The DSEC report added that in the first seven months of 2019, guests of hotels and guesthouses totaled 8,163,000, up by 1.8 percent year-on-year. The average occupancy rate of hotels and guesthouses rose by 1.1 percentage points to 91.4 percent.

The average length of stay of guests in the first seven months held steady at 1.5 nights. Visitor-guests accounted for 69.7 percent of the total overnight visitors, down by 3.0 percentage points year-on-year.