Results of the Package Tours and Hotel Occupancy Rate for March 2006

Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours totalled 293,189 in March 2006, up 38.9% year-on-year. Visitors from Mainland China (251,654) and Hong Kong (9,726) grew 58.3% and 2.7% respectively; however, those from Taiwan, China decreased 69.7% to 8,574over March 2005. In the first quarter of 2006, visitors arrivals in package tours surged 25.9% over the same period of 2005 to 734,822. Number of Macao residents travelling in package tours was 17,588 in March 2006, a year-on-year decrease of 9.9%. Mainland China; Thailand; and Taiwan, China were the three more popular tour itineraries, which accounted for 80.4%, 5.2% and 4.2% of the total respectively. In the first quarter of 2006, Macao residents (61,920) travelling in package tours went up 14.1% compared with the same period of 2005. Meanwhile, 26,691 residents travelled under own arrangements using services provided by the travel agencies, an increase of 17.2% over March 2005; Mainland China (34.0%), Hong Kong (22.0%) and Taiwan, China (18.8%) were the major destinations. In the first quarter of 2006, Macao residents travelled under such arrangements surged 36.3% to 85,828 compared with the same period of 2005. At the end of March 2006, there were 11,297 guest rooms available in hotels and similar establishments, an increase of 712 rooms (+6.7%) over March 2005. In addition, a total of 399,412 guests checked into hotels and similar establishments, a notable growth of 25.3% compared with March 2005. The average hotel occupancy rate reached 75.1% to show a year-on-year increase of 10.3 percentage points; the highest average was in the 3-star hotels, at 86.0%. The hotel guests stayed an average of 1.15 nights, which fell by 0.03 night compared with March last year. The majority of the guests came from Mainland China (62.6%), Hong Kong (21.5%) and Taiwan, China (2.6%). In the first quarter of 2006, there were 1,066,858 hotel guests, up 17.3% over 2005. In this quarter, hotel guests (excluding Macao residents) accounted for 40.5% of the total number of tourists, which was slightly higher than the 40.4% recorded in the same period of 2005.