Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours totalled 706,000 in February 2019, up by 15.3% year-on-year. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (529,000) and Taiwan (61,000) grew by 14.0% and 14.9% respectively; in addition, those from the Republic of Korea (64,000) and Hong Kong (17,000) surged by 32.8% and 27.7%. In the first two months of 2019, there were 1,475,000 package tour visitors, an increase of 4.3% year-on-year.
Attributable to the long holiday of the Lunar New Year, outbound residents using services of travel agencies rose by 15.5% year-on-year to 154,000 in February. Among them, residents travelling under own arrangements increased by 21.4% to 99,000, with those going to Mainland China (47,000), Hong Kong (15,000) and Taiwan (17,000) together accounting for 79.5% of the total. Meanwhile, residents travelling on package tours grew by 6.3% to 56,000, and most of them went to Mainland China (47,000), comprising 84.2% of the total. In the first two months of 2019, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 286,000, up by 12.6% year-on-year.
There were 117 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of February 2019, an increase of 2 year-on-year. Number of available guest rooms grew by 1.0% year-on-year to 39,000, with 5-star hotel rooms rising by 3.0% to 24,000 (63.0% of total).
A total of 1,088,000 guests checked into hotels & guesthouses in February 2019, a growth of 5.0% year-on-year. Guests coming from Mainland China (767,000), the Republic of Korea (47,000) and Hong Kong (111,000) increased by 4.6%, 23.4% and 1.1% respectively, whereas those from Taiwan (32,000) dropped by 10.6%. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses went up by 2.3 percentage points year-on-year to 91.9%, with the rates of 5-star hotels (94.0%) and 3-star hotels (93.2%) rising by 1.2 percentage points and 7.5 percentage points respectively. The average length of stay of guests held steady year-on-year at 1.5 nights.
In the first two months of 2019, guests of hotels & guesthouses totalled 2,333,000, up by 5.3% year-on-year. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses rose by 1.8 percentage points to 92.4%. The average length of stay of guests held stable at 1.5 nights. Visitor-guests constituted 70.7% of the total overnight visitors, down by 1.9 percentage points year-on-year.