Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours totalled 564,000 in March 2016, down by 36.2% year-on-year and down slightly by 0.6% month-to-month. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (446,000) decreased by 37.4% year-on-year, and those from the Republic of Korea (20,000) and Taiwan (31,000) declined by 44.3% and 38.9% respectively. In the first quarter of 2016, visitors on package tours totalled 1,701,000, down by 34.3% year-on-year. Outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 108,000 in March 2016, down by 18.3% year-on-year. Residents travelling on package tours decreased by 20.3% year-on-year to 45,000; those travelling to Mainland China dropped by 35.6%, while those to the Republic of Korea and Taiwan soared by 250.4% and 38.3% respectively. In the first quarter of 2016, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 314,000, down by 17.6% year-on-year. There were 106 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of March 2016, an increase of 7 year-on-year. Number of guest rooms totalled 32,000, up by 4,000 (+13.6%) year-on-year, with rooms of 5-star hotels (20,000) and 4-star hotels (8,000) rising by 11.7% and 28.4% respectively. A total of 893,000 guests checked into hotels & guesthouses in March 2016, up by 12.7% year-on-year. Guests from Mainland China (557,000) increased by 9.8%, while those from Hong Kong (145,000) surged by 44.7%. The average length of stay of guests held stable at 1.4 nights as in March 2015. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses was 76.5%, down by 0.9 percentage points year-on-year, with that of 4-star hotels and 3-star hotels leading at 79.9% and 79.7%, up by 2.4 and 5.4 percentage points respectively. In the first quarter of 2016, guests of hotels & guesthouses totalled 2,660,000, up by 13.4% year-on-year. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses stood at 77.2% and the average length of stay of guests was 1.4 nights, down by 1.9 percentage points and 0.1 night respectively. Visitor-guests accounted for 71.3% of the total overnight visitors, up notably by 3.3 percentage points year-on-year.
