Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that a total of 115 hotels & guesthouses were operating in February and number of available guest rooms dropped by 3.8% year-on-year to 37,000. With a substantial decline in number of visitor arrivals amid the ongoing epidemic of novel coronavirus pneumonia, the average occupancy rate of guest rooms plunged by 76.9 percentage points year-on-year to merely 15.0% in February. The rate of 5-star hotels tumbled by 84.0 percentage points to 10.0%, while the decline in the rates of 2-star hotels (36.9%) and guesthouses (43.3%) was relatively small, with respective decreases of 33.8 percentage points and 22.3 percentage points, as some of their guest rooms were provided to non-resident workers for accommodation.
There were only 157,000 guests checked into hotels & guesthouses in February, a slump of 85.4% year-on-year. Guests coming from different countries/places registered year-on-year decreases of 80% or more, with those from mainland China (106,000) and Hong Kong (21,000) tumbled by 86.3% and 81.0% respectively. Meanwhile, the average length of stay of guests extended by 0.3 night year-on-year to 1.8 nights.
In the first two months of 2020, the average occupancy rate of guest rooms was 50.3%, representing a drop of 42.1 percentage points year-on-year. Guests of hotels & guesthouses reduced by 46.4% to 1,236,000, while their average length of stay increased by 0.1 night to 1.6 nights.
Owing to successive cancellations of most inbound and outbound tours in February, numbers of visitors on package tours (comprising inbound package tours and local tours) and outbound residents showed significant decline. There were only 200 package tour visitors in February; number of outbound residents using services of travel agencies dived 98.1% to 3,000, with the majority (2,900) travelling under own arrangements. In the first two months of 2020, a total of 253,000 package tour visitors were recorded, a fall of 83.0% year-on-year; outbound residents using services of travel agencies decreased by 72.9% to 84,000.