Package Tours and Hotel Occupancy Rate for February 2008

Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that Macao registered 392,277 visitor arrivals in package tours in February 2008, up by 3.8% from a year earlier. Visitors from Mainland China (281,620) and Japan (16,123) recorded year-on-year growth of 2.1% and 78.1% respectively, while those from Hong Kong (24,736) dropped by 36.8%. In the first two months of 2008, visitors arrived in package tours grew by 11.3% over the same period of 2007 to 773,273. In February 2008, the number of Macao residents travelling in package tours dropped by 8.9% year-on-year to 19,067. Mainland China; Thailand; and Taiwan, China were the three most popular tour itineraries, which accounted for 67.9%, 7.8% and 5.9% of the total respectively. In the first two months of 2008, Macao residents travelling in package tours rose by 3.4% over the same period of 2007 to 32,603. Meanwhile, 28,453 residents travelled under individual arrangements using services provided by travel agencies, up by 6.3% over February 2007. Hong Kong (42.1%), Mainland China (28.0%) and Taiwan, China (9.3%) were the major destinations. In the first two months of 2008, Macao residents travelled under such arrangements rose by 22.1% compared with the same period of 2007 to 61,510. At the end of February 2008, the total number of guest rooms available in the hotel sector increased by 3,052 (+23.4%) from a year earlier to 16,115 rooms. In February 2008, a total of 483,247 guests checked into hotels and similar establishments, representing a year-on-year growth of 13.1%. The majority of the guests came from Mainland China (48.1%) and Hong Kong (25.7%). The average hotel occupancy rate dropped by 2.7 percentage points to 71.4%, with 4-star hotels leading at 74.1%; in addition, the average length of stay of hotel guests extended by 0.2 night to 1.4 nights. Number of hotel guests totalled 1,045,923 in the first two months of 2008, up by 22.0% over the same period of 2007. In the first two months of 2008, visitor-guests staying in hotels accounted for 43.1% of the total number of tourists, up from 40.4% recorded in the corresponding period of 2007.