Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours rose by 24.6% year-on-year to 917,000 in November 2017, with a month-to-month increase of 14.8%. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (744,000), the Republic of Korea (48,000) and Taiwan (46,000) went up by 26.2%, 41.5% and 23.0% respectively year-on-year. In the first eleven months of 2017, visitors on package tours totalled 7,721,000, up by 12.9% year-on-year.
Outbound residents using services of travel agencies increased by 13.2% year-on-year to 123,000. Among them, residents travelling on package tours grew by 5.0% to 52,000, with those going to Mainland China (34,000) dropping slightly by 0.6%. In the first eleven months of 2017, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 1,260,000, up by 11.6% year-on-year.
There were 110 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of November 2017, an increase of 3 year-on-year. Number of guest rooms grew by 2.5% year-on-year to 37,000, with 5-star hotel rooms rising by 2.9% to 22,000, accounting for 60.1% of the total.
Number of guests of hotels & guesthouses in November 2017 rose by 2.1% year-on-year to 1,133,000. Guests coming from Mainland China (768,000) and the Republic of Korea (40,000) increased by 9.4% and 27.9% respectively year-on-year; meanwhile, guests from Hong Kong (112,000) and Taiwan (36,000) dropped by 25.1% and 8.9% respectively. The average length of stay of guests held steady year-on-year at 1.4 nights. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses stood at 90.4%, up by 3.3 percentage points year-on-year, with 4-star hotels (93.7%) and 5-star hotels (91.3%) recording relatively high rates in November, up by 0.9 percentage points and 4.6 percentage points respectively year-on-year.
In the first eleven months of 2017, guests of hotels & guesthouses totalled 11,951,000, up by 10.4% year-on-year. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses rose by 3.7 percentage points to 86.4%. The average length of stay of guests went up by 0.1 night year-on-year to 1.5 nights. Visitor-guests accounted for 72.1% of the total overnight visitors, up slightly by 0.1 percentage pointyear-on-year.