Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours decreased by 7.7% year-on-year to 510,679 in March 2010. Visitors from Mainland China (355,300) and Taiwan, China (25,225) dropped by 18.8% and 5.9% respectively, while those from Japan (27,581) and Hong Kong (21,196) rose by 55.9% and 6.3% respectively. Moreover, visitors from the Republic of Korea (14,173), India (6,530) and Vietnam (5,924) also registered notable increase. In the first quarter of 2010, visitor arrivals in package tours increased by 4.6% year-on-year to 1,433,956. In March 2010, the number of Macao residents travelling outbound in package tours increased by 8.8% year-on-year to 18,494, with Mainland China (77.4% of total), Japan (6.7%) and Hong Kong (4.4%) being the most popular tour itineraries. In the first quarter of 2010, Macao residents travelling in package tours totalled 51,534, up by 8.5% year-on-year. Meanwhile, outbound residents travelling under own arrangements using services of travel agencies increased by 9.0% year-on-year to 34,791; the main destinations were Hong Kong (31.5% of total), Mainland China (29.1%) and Taiwan, China (18.9%). Outbound residents travelling under such arrangements rose by 12.9% year-on-year to 100,737 in the first quarter of 2010. At the end of March 2010, total number of available guest rooms of the hotel sector increased by 1,831 (+10.4%) year-on-year to 19,408 rooms. A total of 641,987 guests checked into hotels and guest-houses in March 2010, up by 7.6% year-on-year, with the majority coming from Mainland China (52.0% of total) and Hong Kong (20.4%). The average occupancy rate of hotels and guest-houses increased by 4.9 percentage points year-on-year to 77.5% and that of hotels reached 78.2%, with 4-star hotels leading at 84.6%. The average length of stay of guests increased by 0.1 night to 1.5 nights. The cumulative number of guests reached 1,885,263 in the first quarter of 2010, up by 15.2% over the same period of 2009. In the first quarter of 2010, visitor-guests of hotels and guest-houses accounted for 60.7% of the total number of tourists, down from 61.9% in the same period of 2009.
