Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours surged by 167.0% year-on-year to 489,023 in June 2010, as visitors in package tours for June last year were still under the adverse effect of the human swine influenza. In comparison with June 2009, visitors from Mainland China (337,558), Hong Kong (23,357), Japan (22,591) and Taiwan, China (22,152) rose substantially by 210.6%, 51.5%, 142.3% and 75.4% respectively, and those from India (12,231) and the Republic of Korea (11,777) also registered notable increase. In the first half year of 2010, visitor arrivals in package tours increased by 34.8% year-on-year to 3,064,939. In June 2010, Macao residents travelling outbound in package tours soared by 81.6% year-on-year to 21,984, with Mainland China (74.1% of total), Japan (7.2%) and Taiwan, China (6.1%) being the most popular tour itineraries. In the first six months of 2010, residents travelling in package tours totalled 110,559, up by 20.6% year-on-year. Meanwhile, outbound residents travelling under own arrangements using services of travel agencies rose by 28.7% year-on-year to 43,001 and the main destinations were Hong Kong (31.9% of total), Mainland China (31.0%) and Taiwan, China (17.0%). In the first half year of 2010, outbound residents travelling under such arrangements increased by 10.5% year-on-year to 217,313. At the end of June 2010, total number of available guest rooms of the hotel sector increased by 1,389 (+7.6%) year-on-year to 19,560 rooms. A total of 603,004 guests checked into hotels and guest-houses in June 2010, up notably by 35.3% year-on-year, with the majority coming from Mainland China (50.4% of total) and Hong Kong (20.6%). The average occupancy rate of hotels and guest-houses rose substantially by 15.2 percentage points year-on-year to 75.7%; average occupancy rate of hotels stood at 76.5%, with 4-star hotels leading at 77.3%. The average length of stay of guests decreased by 0.03 night to 1.5 nights. Number of guests reached 3,800,614 in the first half year of 2010, up by 22.4% over the same period of 2009. In the first six months of 2010, visitor-guests of hotels and guest-houses accounted for 60.9% of the total number of tourists, down from 61.7% in the same period of 2009.
