Results of the Package Tours and Hotel Occupancy Rate for July 2006

Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours totalled 227,239 in July 2006, down 6.6% year-on-year. Visitors from Mainland China (185,084), Taiwan, China (13,013) and Hong Kong (8,109) dropped 4.6%, 41.8% and 29.6% respectively over July 2005. In the first seven months of 2006, visitor arrivals in package tours grew 13.6% over the same period of 2005 to 1,681,937. Number of Macao residents travelling in package tours was 24,991 in July 2006, a year-on-year decrease of 22.6%. Mainland China, Thailand and Taiwan, China were the three more popular tour itineraries, which accounted for 68.4%, 9.1% and 5.3% of the total respectively. In the first seven months of 2006, Macao residents (155,578) travelling in package tours decreased 2.0% compared with the same period of 2005. Meanwhile, 36,832 residents travelled under own arrangements using services provided by the travel agencies, an increase of 6.9% over July 2005; Hong Kong (39.2%), Mainland China (29.1%) and Taiwan, China (11.5%) were the major destinations. In the first seven months of 2006, Macao residents travelled under such arrangements surged 20.3% to 208,114 compared with the corresponding period of 2005. At the end of July 2006, number of guest rooms available in hotel industry registered an increase of 1,230 rooms (+11.6%) over July 2005 to 11,792 rooms. In addition, a total of 399,230 guests checked into hotels and similar establishments, a growth of 5.2% compared with July 2005. The average hotel occupancy rate was 72.8%, representing a decrease of 1.2 percentage points over July 2005, the highest average was in the 4-star hotels, at 82.6%. Average length of stay of hotel guests remained the same as in July 2005, at 1.16 nights. The majority of the guests came from Mainland China (54.1%), Hong Kong (27.8%) and Taiwan, China (3.2%). In the first seven months of 2006, number of hotel guests increased 12.0% over the same period of 2005 to 2,558,298. In the first seven months of 2006, hotel guests (excluding Macao residents) accounted for 41.0% of the total number of tourists, which was lower than the 42.7% recorded in the same period of 2005.