Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours totalled 541,000 in May 2016, down by 34.2% year-on-year and 8.5% month-to-month. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (420,000) decreased by 36.0% year-on-year, and those from the Republic of Korea (26,000) and Taiwan (29,000) dropped by 29.6% and 40.9% respectively. In the first five months of 2016, visitors on package tours totalled 2,833,000, down by 33.6% year-on-year. Outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 98,000 in May 2016, down by 21.5% year-on-year and yet up by 5.6% month-to-month. Residents travelling on package tours decreased by 28.0% year-on-year to 37,000; those travelling to Mainland China and the Republic of Korea dropped by 36.0% and 21.2% respectively, while those to Hong Kong and Taiwan rose by 44.7% and 19.1%. In the first five months of 2016, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 503,000, down by 17.1% year-on-year. There were 105 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of May 2016, an increase of 3 year-on-year. Number of guest rooms totalled 32,000, up by 2,600 (+8.6%) year-on-year; 4-star hotel rooms (7,700) had the largest growth of 28.4% and 5-star hotel rooms (21,000) increased by 5.1%. A total of 932,000 guests checked into hotels & guesthouses in May 2016, up by 9.2% year-on-year. Guests from Mainland China (592,000) increased by 8.3%, while those from Hong Kong (129,000) and Taiwan (36,000) registered double-digit growth, at 14.3% and 34.0% respectively. The average length of stay of guests held stable at 1.4 nights as in May 2015. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses was 79.3%, down by 0.6 percentage point year-on-year; the occupancy rate of 4-star hotels (84.5%) and 3-star hotels (82.7%) increased by 4.5 and 3.7 percentage points respectively. In the first five months of 2016, guests of hotels & guesthouses totalled 4,510,000, up by 12.1% year-on-year. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses stood at 78.0% and the average length of stay of guests was 1.4 nights, down by 1.4 percentage points and 0.1 night respectively. Visitor-guests accounted for 71.6% of the total overnight visitors, up notably by 3.5 percentage points year-on-year.
