Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours increased by 20.3% year-on-year to 572,157 in April 2010. Visitors from Mainland China (429,510) and Hong Kong (22,594) rose by 17.8% and 6.3% respectively, and those from Japan (16,882) and the Republic of Korea (15,019) also registered notable increase; however, visitors from Taiwan, China (24,567) decreased by 12.8%. In the first four months of 2010, visitor arrivals in package tours increased by 8.6% year-on-year to 2,006,113. In April 2010, the number of Macao residents travelling outbound in package tours decreased by 4.2% year-on-year to 17,940, with Mainland China (77.7% of total); Japan (6.1%); and Taiwan, China (5.5%) being the most popular tour itineraries. In the first four months of 2010, Macao residents travelling in package tours totalled 69,474, up by 4.9% year-on-year. Meanwhile, outbound residents travelling under own arrangements using services of travel agencies decreased by 1.8% year-on-year to 36,627; the main destinations were Hong Kong (35.2% of total), Mainland China (29.8%) and Taiwan, China (16.9%). Outbound residents travelling under such arrangements rose by 8.6% year-on-year to 137,364 in the first four months of 2010. At the end of April 2010, total number of available guest rooms of the hotel sector increased by 2,053 (+11.7%) year-on-year to 19,631 rooms. A total of 664,286 guests checked into hotels and guest-houses in April 2010, up by 15.1% year-on-year, with the majority coming from Mainland China (51.8% of total) and Hong Kong (22.8%). The average occupancy rate of hotels and guest-houses increased by 7.2 percentage points year-on-year to 80.7% and that of hotels reached 81.3%, with 4-star hotels leading at 87.0%. The average length of stay of guests increased by 0.1 night to 1.4 nights. The cumulative number of guests reached 2,546,761 in the first four months of 2010, up by 15.0% over the same period of 2009. In the first four months of 2010, visitor-guests of hotels and guest-houses accounted for 60.6% of the total number of tourists, down from 62.0% in the same period of 2009.
