Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours tumbled by 41.8% year-on-year to 543,000 in December 2019, with those coming from mainland China (416,000), the Republic of Korea (38,000) and Taiwan (58,000) declining by 44.4%, 39.1% and 6.8% respectively. For the whole year of 2019, number of package tour visitors decreased by 8.7% year-on-year to 8,333,000; those from mainland China (6,440,000) and the Republic of Korea (584,000) fell by 9.8% and 5.4% respectively, whereas those from Hong Kong (148,000) and Taiwan (710,000) grew by 4.0% and 2.0%.
Outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 149,000 in December, a decrease of 10.1% year-on-year. Residents travelling under own arrangements (92,000) dropped by 20.7% while those travelling on package tours (57,000) rose by 14.6%. For the whole year of 2019, outbound residents using services of travel agencies edged down by 0.7% year-on-year to 1,767,000. Residents travelling under own arrangements went down by 4.1% to 1,201,000, as those visiting Hong Kong (336,000) and Taiwan (165,000) fell by 19.8% and 6.0% respectively. Meanwhile, residents travelling on package tours increased by 7.4% to 566,000, with those going to mainland China taking up 80.5%.
There were 123 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of December 2019, an increase of 7 year-on-year; however, number of available guest rooms reduced by 1.4% to 38,000 on account of renovations undertaken in some hotels.
A total of 1,221,000 guests checked into hotels & guesthouses in December 2019, down by 2.2% year-on-year. Guests coming from mainland China (821,000) decreased by 4.9%, while those from the Republic of Korea (47,000) and Hong Kong (163,000) grew by 12.5% and 20.4% respectively. The average occupancy rate of guest rooms went down by 2.7 percentage points year-on-year to 92.0%. The average length of stay of guests was 1.5 nights, up by 0.1 night year-on-year.
For the whole year of 2019, guests of hotels & guesthouses reached 14,104,000, an increase of 1.1% year-on-year. Guests coming from mainland China (9,825,000), the Republic of Korea (553,000) and Hong Kong (1,602,000) rose by 1.9%, 14.9% and 7.4% respectively, whereas those from Taiwan (455,000) fell by 3.8%. The average occupancy rate of guest rooms of hotels & guesthouses in 2019 dropped by 0.3 percentage points year-on-year to 90.8%; the rates of 5-star and 3-star hotels both stood at 92.2%, down by 0.2 percentage points and up by 0.7 percentage points respectively. The average length of stay of guests held steady year-on-year at 1.5 nights. Visitor-guests accounted for 72.4% of the total overnight visitors, a rise of 1.0 percentage point year-on-year.