Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours increased by 7.8% year-on-year to 524,527 in December 2010. In comparison with December 2009, visitors from Mainland China (364,265), Hong Kong (35,331) and Republic of Korea (17,435) rose by 9.5%, 36.3% and 114.5% respectively, while those from Japan (21,568); Taiwan, China (20,388) and Malaysia (16,473) decreased by 14.3%, 19.9% and 2.1% respectively. For the whole year of 2010, visitor arrivals in package tours totalled 5,745,222, up by 23.6% year-on-year. In December 2010, Macao residents travelling outbound in package tours rose by 9.9% year-on-year to 27,685, with Mainland China (78.2% of total); Taiwan, China (6.3%); Republic of Korea (4.1%) and Japan (3.4%) being the most popular tour itineraries. For 2010 as a whole, residents travelling in package tours totalled 252,493, up by 22.4% year-on-year. Meanwhile, outbound residents travelling under own arrangements using services of travel agencies increased slightly by 0.2% year-on-year to 45,718 and the main destinations were Mainland China (34.3% of total); Hong Kong (31.1%); Taiwan, China (16.3%) and Thailand (6.9%). For the whole year of 2010, outbound residents travelling under such arrangements went up by 7.7% year-on-year to 500,133. At the end of December 2010, total number of available guest rooms of the hotel sector increased by 832 (+4.3%) year-on-year to 20,091 rooms. A total of 727,512 guests checked into hotels and guest-houses in December 2010, up by 4.3% year-on-year, with the majority coming from Mainland China (52.1% of total) and Hong Kong (20.2%). The average occupancy rate of hotels and guest-houses stood at 87.7%, up by 5.5 percentage points year-on-year; average occupancy rate of hotels reached 88.5%, with 4-star hotels leading at 94.4%. The average length of stay of guests decreased by 0.05 night to 1.4 nights. For the whole year of 2010, number of hotel guests increased by 15.5% year-on-year to 7,755,214; the average occupancy rate of the hotels and guest-houses surged by 8.4 percentage points to 79.8%. For the whole year of 2010, visitor-guests of hotels and guest-houses accounted for 61.1% of the total number of tourists, down from 61.5% in 2009.
