Results of the Package Tours and Hotel Occupancy Rate for July 2007

Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours totalled 320,378 in July 2007, which surged by 41.1% year-on-year. Visitors from Mainland China (218,995) increased by 18.3%, whereas those from Taiwan, China (30,086) and Hong Kong (26,540) recorded remarkable growth of 131.2% and 227.3% respectively compared with July 2006. In the first seven months of 2007, visitors arrived in package tours increased by 35.6% over the same period of 2006 to 2,276,872. In July, the number of Macao residents travelling in package tours dropped by 14.4% year-on-year to 21,391. Mainland China, Thailand, and Japan were the three most popular tour itineraries, which accounted for 66.5%, 10.2% and 6.5% of the total respectively. In the first seven months of 2007, Macao residents travelling in package tours dropped by 23.3% over the same period of 2006 to 119,361. Meanwhile, 38,813 residents travelled under own arrangements using services provided by travel agencies, an increase of 5.4% over July 2006. Hong Kong (49.7%), Mainland China (22.0%) and Taiwan, China (12.3%) were the major destinations. In the first seven months of 2007, Macao residents travelled under such arrangements dropped by 5.6% compared with the same period of 2006 to 196,428. At the end of July 2007, the number of guest rooms available in the hotel industry registered an increase of 1,067 rooms (+9.0%) year-on-year to 12,859 rooms. In July 2007, a total of 470,524 guests checked into hotels and similar establishments, representing a year-on-year growth of 17.9%. The average hotel occupancy rate rose by 5.7 percentage points to 77.7%, with 4-star hotels leading at 86.9%. The average length of stay of hotel guests increased by 0.1 night to 1.26 nights. The majority of the guests came from Mainland China (48.3%) and Hong Kong (31.0%). Number of hotel guests totalled 3,165,629 in the first seven months of 2007, up by 23.7% over the same period of 2006. In the first seven months of 2007, hotel guests (excluding Macao residents) accounted for 42.6% of the total number of tourists, up from 41.0% in 2006.