Package tours and hotel occupancy rate for February 2015

Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that attributable to the Lunar New Year holidays, visitors on package tours increased by 13.2% year-on-year to 983,000 in February 2015; visitors arriving on package tours (673,000) accounted for 68.5% of the total, while those joining local tours shared 31.5%. Package tour visitors from Mainland China increased by 21.5% year-on-year to 804,000, with 418,000 coming from Guangdong Province. Visitors from the Republic of Korea (41,000) and Hong Kong (39,000) increased by 7.7% and 8.1% respectively year-on-year, whereas those from Taiwan (53,000) decreased by 12.0%. In the first two months of 2015, visitors on package tours reached 1,940,000, up by 16.8% year-on-year. Outbound residents using services of travel agencies were 135,000 in February 2015, up by 10.2% year-on-year; those travelling on package tours surged by 29.1% to 56,000, and the main destinations were Mainland China (80.7% of total), the Republic of Korea (5.2%), Taiwan (3.9%) and Hong Kong (3.4%). In the first two months of 2015, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 247,000, up by 3.6% year-on-year. There were 97 hotels and guesthouses operating at the end of February 2015, providing 28,000 guest rooms, up by 1.0% year-on-year; 5-star hotels accounted for 65.2% of the total supply, with 18,000 rooms. A total of 756,000 guests checked into hotels and guesthouses in February 2015, down by 9.9% year-on-year. Guests from Mainland China (512,000) and Hong Kong (87,000) decreased by 6.4% and 16.2%. The average length of stay of guests held stable as February 2014, at 1.4 nights. On account of an increase in guest rooms and a decrease in guests, the average occupancy rate of hotels and guesthouses tumbled by 11.3 percentage points year-on-year to 80.2%, with 5-star hotels leading at 83.3%. In the first two months of 2015, hotel guests totalled 1,559,000, down by 8.9% year-on-year; the average occupancy rate stood at 79.8%, a decrease of 6.1 percentage points. Visitor-guests accounted for 66.5% of the total overnight visitors, down by 1.9 percentage points year-on-year.