Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours totalled 681,000 in May 2017, up by 1.2% month-to-month and 20.7% year-on-year. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (524,000), the Republic of Korea (42,000) and Taiwan (35,000) rose by 18.9%, 56.4% and 14.6% respectively year-on-year. In the first five months of 2017, visitors on package tours totalled 3,085,000, up by 8.0% year-on-year.
Outbound residents using services of travel agencies rose by 15.1% year-on-year to 112,000. Residents travelling on package tours (46,000) went up by 23.1%, with those going to Mainland China increasing by 21.6% to 32,000. In the first five months of 2017, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 557,000, up by 10.6% year-on-year.
There were 107 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of May 2017. Number of guest rooms increased by 13.0% year-on-year to 36,000, with 32 five-star hotels offering 22,000 rooms (60.1% of the total), up by 6.0% year-on-year.
Number of guests of hotels & guesthouses in May 2017 increased by 20.1% year-on-year to 1,125,000, and those coming from Mainland China (719,000), Hong Kong (138,000) and Taiwan (44,000) grew by 21.0%, 6.3% and 21.2% respectively; guests from the Republic of Korea surged by 107.9% to 44,000. The average length of stay of guests held stable at 1.4 nights. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses went up by 5.0 percentage points year-on-year to 84.9%, with that of four-star hotels leading at 89.2%, up by 5.1 percentage points; meanwhile, the occupancy rates of five-star (84.8%) and three-star hotels (83.2%) also grew by 5.5 percentage points and 0.5 percentage points respectively year-on-year.