Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours totalled 785,000 in August 2018, up by 12.4% year-on-year and 3.3% month-to-month. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (611,000) rose by 6.8% year-on-year, and those from the Republic of Korea (56,000) and Taiwan (63,000) surged by 66.5% and 91.1% respectively. In the first eight months of 2018, visitors on package tours totalled 5,813,000, up by 10.7% year-on-year.
Outbound residents using services of travel agencies increased by 20.0% year-on-year to 141,000. Number of residents travelling on package tours decreased by 8.1% to 44,000, with those going to Mainland China rising by 10.2% to 31,000 (71.6% of total); however, residents travelling to the Republic of Korea (18,000) tumbled by 66.6% year-on-year. In the first eight months of 2018, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 1,036,000, up by 13.7% year-on-year.
There were 116 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of August 2018, an increase of 9 year-on-year. Number of guest rooms grew by 7.8% year-on-year to 39,000, of which 5-star hotel rooms went up by 10.8% to 25,000, accounting for 62.2% of the total.
Number of guests of hotels & guesthouses in August 2018 rose by 16.8% year-on-year to 1,279,000. Guests coming from Mainland China (912,000), Hong Kong (140,000) and Taiwan (42,000) increased by 25.4%, 1.4% and 7.0% respectively, while those from the Republic of Korea (44,000) dropped by 10.9%. The average length of stay of guests went up by 0.1 night year-on-year to 1.5 nights. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses registered a record high of 93.3% since the survey results were first released, a growth of 6.5 percentage points year-on-year; meanwhile, the rates of 5-star and 4-star hotels reached 96.2% and 94.6% respectively.
In the first eight months of 2018, guests of hotels & guesthouses totalled 9,373,000, up by 8.0% year-on-year. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses rose by 3.7 percentage points to 89.3% and the average length of stay of guests held steady year-on-year at 1.5 nights. Visitor-guests accounted for 72.5% of the total overnight visitors, down marginally by 0.1 percentage points year-on-year.