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

Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours totalled 289,626 in November 2006, up slightly by 0.2% year-on-year. Among them, visitors from Mainland China (214,504) dropped 10.6%, while those from Hong Kong (21,720) and Southeast Asia (13,637) reported remarkable growths of 121.4% and 114.2% respectively compared with November 2005. In the first eleven months of 2006, visitor arrivals in package tours grew 6.9% over the same period of 2005 to 2,602,613. Number of Macao residents travelling in package tours in November 2006 was 21,754, a year-on-year increase of 12.0%. Mainland China; Thailand; and Taiwan, China were the three most popular tour itineraries, which accounted for 82.2%, 4.9% and 4.4% of the total respectively. In the first eleven months of 2006, Macao residents (245,335) travelling in package tours went down 8.4% compared with the same period of 2005. Meanwhile, 30,428 residents travelled under own arrangements using services provided by travel agencies, a marginal decrease of 0.5% over November 2005. Mainland China (37.8%); Hong Kong (33.1%); and Taiwan, China (12.5%) were the major destinations. In the first eleven months of 2006, Macao residents travelled under such arrangements increased 12.4% to 332,582 over the corresponding period of 2005. At the end of November 2006, number of guest rooms available in the hotel industry registered an increase of 1,860 rooms (+17.2%) over November 2005 to 12,693 rooms. In addition, a total of 443,377 guests checked into hotels and similar establishments, representing a year-on-year growth of 14.3%. The average hotel occupancy rate dropped by 5.0 percentage points to 77.6%, with 4-star hotels leading at 85.0%. The average length of stay of hotel guests edged down by 0.01 night to 1.20 nights. The majority of the guests came from Mainland China (56.8%), Hong Kong (25.0%) and Taiwan, China (2.5%). In the first eleven months of 2006, number of hotel guests increased 12.4% over the same period of 2005 to 4,198,986. In the first eleven months of 2006, hotel guests (excluding Macao residents) accounted for 41.4% of the total number of tourists, which was lower than the 43.2% recorded in the same period of 2005.