Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours totalled 804,000 in October 2015, down by 19.8% year-on-year and yet up by 11.8% month-to-month. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (669,000) decreased by 17.9% year-on-year, and those from the Republic of Korea (23,000), Hong Kong (17,000) and Taiwan (40,000) dropped by 36.0%, 27.9% and 38.4% respectively; meanwhile, visitors from Japan (14,000) rose by 11.0%. Visitors arriving on package tours totalled 756,000, down by 9.5% year-on-year, while visitors joining local tours tumbled by 71.3% to 48,000. In the first ten months of 2015, visitors on package tours totalled 8,222,000, down by 9.0% year-on-year; those arriving on package tours (7,051,000) decreased by 5.3%. Outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 127,000 in October 2015, down by 4.6% year-on-year; those travelling on package tours increased by 1.7% to 51,000, and the main destinations were Mainland China (76.9% of total), Korea (5.7%) and Taiwan (5.1%). In the first ten months of 2015, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 1,260,000, down slightly by 0.5% year-on-year. There were 104 hotels and guesthouses operating at the end of October 2015, providing 32,000 guest rooms, up by 13.1% year-on-year. With new hotels commencing operations, number of guest rooms in 4-star hotels increased by 38.7% year-on-year to 7,700, while 5-star hotels had 20,000 guest rooms, accounting for 24.4% and 63.0% of the total supply respectively. Number of guests checking into hotels and guesthouses totalled 896,000 in October 2015, up by 4.2% year-on-year. Guests from Mainland China (586,000) and Hong Kong (116,000) increased by 5.2% and 20.3% respectively. The average length of stay of guests rose by 0.1 night year-on-year to 1.5 nights. The average occupancy rate of hotels and guesthouses was 77.6%, down by 8.0 percentage points year-on-year, with 5-star hotels leading at 81.6%, down by 5.1 percentage points. In the first ten months of 2015, guests of hotels and guesthouses totalled 8,501,000 and the average occupancy rate stood at 79.8%, down by 4.8% and 6.4 percentage points respectively year-on-year. Visitor-guests accounted for 68.0% of the total overnight visitors, down by 0.7 percentage points year-on-year.
