Package tours and hotel occupancy rate for April 2015

Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours totalled 806,000 in April 2015, down by 6.8% year-on-year. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (648,000) and Taiwan (45,000) dropped by 6.6% and 19.6% year-on-year, while those from the Republic of Korea (35,000) and Hong Kong (29,000) rose by 11.9% and 0.5% respectively. Visitors arriving on package tours decreased by 7.7% year-on-year to 657,000, with those from Mainland China (518,000) and Taiwan (38,000) dropping by 8.4% and 21.2% respectively. Meanwhile, visitors joining local tours totalled 150,000, a decrease of 2.6%. In the first four months of 2015, visitors on package tours reached 3,385,000, up by 6.5% year-on-year; those arriving on package tours grew by 6.1% to 2,751,000. Outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 113,000 in April 2015, a year-on-year decrease of 1.8%; those travelling on package tours dropped by 1.1% to 45,000, and the main destinations were Mainland China (77.0% of total), Taiwan (8.8%), the Republic of Korea (4.2%) and Hong Kong (3.5%). In the first four months of 2015, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 497,000, up by 6.2% year-on-year. There were 99 hotels and guesthouses operating at the end of April 2015, providing 28,000 guest rooms, up by 1.7% year-on-year; 5-star hotels accounted for 64.8% of the total supply, with 18,000 rooms. A total of 827,000 guests checked into hotels and guesthouses in April 2015, down by 7.1% year-on-year. Guests from Mainland China (521,000) decreased by 12.0%, while those from Hong Kong (125,000) and Taiwan (29,000) increased by 10.9% and 8.6% respectively. The average length of stay of guests held stable as April 2014, at 1.4 nights. The average occupancy rate of hotels and guesthouses was 79.4%, a rebound from March (77.2%) yet still down by 5.9 percentage points year-on-year; the rate of 4-star hotels and 5-star hotels was 82.2% and 79.5% respectively. In the first four months of 2015, hotel guests totalled 3,184,000, down by 10.4% year-on-year; the average occupancy rate stood at 79.0%, a decrease of 7.3 percentage points. Visitor-guests accounted for 68.1% of the total overnight visitors, down by 1.5 percentage points year-on-year.