Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours totalled 183,697 in September 2006, down 5.5% year-on-year. Among them, visitors from Mainland China (140,220) dropped 6.9%, while those from Japan (8,773) and Hong Kong (8,636) rose 47.8% and 7.6% respectively over September 2005. In the first nine months of 2006, visitor arrivals in package tours grew 8.8% over the same period of 2005 to 2,099,627. Number of Macao residents travelling in package tours was 14,287 in September 2006, a significant year-on-year decrease of 40.7%. Mainland China, Thailand and Taiwan, China were the three more popular tour itineraries, which accounted for 76.1%, 6.1% and 4.6% of the total respectively. In the first nine months of 2006, Macao residents travelling in package tours decreased 9.4% to 203,982 compared with the same period of 2005. Meanwhile, 27,072 residents travelled under own arrangements using services provided by travel agencies, a decrease of 6.5% over September 2005; Mainland China (34.2%), Hong Kong (30.4%) and Taiwan, China (16.5%) were the major destinations. In the first nine months of 2006, Macao residents travelled under such arrangements increased 15.7% to 275,205 from the corresponding period of 2005. At the end of September 2006, number of guest rooms available in the hotel industry registered a year-on-year increase of 1,732 rooms (+16.2%) to 12,411 rooms. In addition, a total of 365,094 guests checked into hotels and similar establishments, a growth of 12.1% compared with September 2005. The average hotel occupancy rate was 67.2%, representing a marginal growth of 0.3 percentage point over September 2005; the highest average was in the 4-star hotels, at 73.6%. The average length of stay of hotel guests showed an increase of 0.01 night, at 1.18 nights. The majority of the guests came from Mainland China (53.0%), Hong Kong (28.9%) and Taiwan, China (3.1%). In the first nine months of 2006, the number of hotel guests increased 11.6% over the same period of 2005 to 3,343,161. In the first nine months of 2006, hotel guests (excluding Macao residents) accounted for 41.1% of the total number of tourists, which was lower than the 42.8% recorded in the same period of 2005.
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