Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours decreased by 9.3% year-on-year to 450,597 in November 2010, putting an end to the increase in the past seven months. In comparison with November 2009, visitors from Mainland China (320,866); Hong Kong (21,672); Taiwan, China (19,632) and Malaysia (12,354) decreased by 12.3%, 3.2%, 29.6% and 4.0% respectively, while those from Japan (22,608); Republic of Korea (13,501) and India (8,736) rose by 1.2%, 139.5% and 59.9% respectively. From January to November of 2010, visitor arrivals in package tours increased by 25.4% year-on-year to 5,220,695. In November 2010, Macao residents travelling outbound in package tours decreased by 7.6% year-on-year to 18,775, with Mainland China (78.2% of total); Taiwan, China (4.6%); Republic of Korea (4.5%) and Hong Kong (3.9%) being the most popular tour itineraries. In the first eleven months of 2010, residents travelling in package tours totalled 224,806, up by 24.1% year-on-year. Meanwhile, outbound residents travelling under own arrangements using services of travel agencies increased by 7.5% year-on-year to 45,499 and the main destinations were Hong Kong (33.6% of total); Mainland China (31.2%); Taiwan, China (17.3%) and Thailand (6.5%). In the first eleven months of 2010, outbound residents travelling under such arrangements went up by 8.5% year-on-year to 454,415. At the end of November 2010, total number of available guest rooms of the hotel sector increased by 800 (+4.2%) year-on-year to 20,059 rooms. A total of 657,487 guests checked into hotels and guest-houses in November 2010, up by 4.3% year-on-year, with the majority coming from Mainland China (53.2% of total) and Hong Kong (18.8%). The average occupancy rate of hotels and guest-houses reached 82.8%, up by 4.5 percentage points year-on-year; average occupancy rate of hotels stood at 83.5%, with 4-star hotels leading at 91.0%. The average length of stay of guests decreased by 0.05 night to 1.4 nights. Number of guests reached 7,027,702 in the first eleven months of 2010, up by 16.8% over the same period of 2009. In the first eleven months of 2010, visitor-guests of hotels and guest-houses accounted for 61.0% of the total number of tourists, down from 61.3% in the same period of 2009.
