Package tours and hotel occupancy rate for February 2016

Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours totalled 569,000 in February 2016, down by 34.0% year-on-year and 0.2% month-to-month. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (438,000) decreased by 36.7% year-on-year, and those from the Republic of Korea (34,000) and Taiwan (40,000) dropped by 18.8% and 24.2% respectively. In the first two months of 2016, visitors on package tours totalled 1,139,000, down by 33.2% year-on-year. Outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 105,000 in February 2016, down by 23.2% year-on-year. Residents travelling on package tours decreased by 23.1% year-on-year to 44,000; the main destination was Mainland China (75.3% of total), down by 22.6%, followed by the Republic of Korea (8.2%) and Hong Kong (5.7%). In the first two months of 2016, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 207,000, down by 16.9% year-on-year. There were 106 hotels/guesthouses operating at the end of February 2016, an increase of 8 year-on-year. Number of guest rooms totalled 32,000, up by 4,000 (+13.9%) year-on-year, with rooms of 5-star hotels (20,000) and 4-star hotels (8,000) together accounting for 87.5% of the total. A total of 872,000 guests checked into hotels/guesthouses in February 2016, up by 15.9% year-on-year. Guests from Mainland China increased by 9.1% to 562,000, while those from the Republic of Korea (23,000), Hong Kong (130,000) and Taiwan (36,000) recorded double-digit growth. The average length of stay of guests held stable at 1.4 nights as in February 2015. The average occupancy rate of hotels/guesthouses was 78.6%, down by 1.8 percentage points year-on-year; 5-star hotels had the highest occupancy rate at 80.5%, down by 3.2 percentage points, while the rate for 4-star hotels rose by 5.1 percentage points to 79.7%. In the first two months of 2016, guests of hotels/guesthouses totalled 1,767,000, up by 13.8% year-on-year. The average occupancy rate of hotels/guesthouses stood at 77.5% and the average length of stay of guests was 1.4 nights, down by 2.5 percentage points and 0.1 night respectively. Visitor-guests accounted for 71.1% of the total overnight visitors, up substantially by 5.0 percentage points year-on-year.