Package tours and hotel occupancy rate for March 2016

Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours totalled 564,000 in March 2016, down by 36.2% year-on-year and down slightly by 0.6% month-to-month. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (446,000) decreased by 37.4% year-on-year, and those from the Republic of Korea (20,000) and Taiwan (31,000) declined by 44.3% and 38.9% respectively. In the first quarter of 2016, visitors on package tours totalled 1,701,000, down by 34.3% year-on-year. Outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 108,000 in March 2016, down by 18.3% year-on-year. Residents travelling on package tours decreased by 20.3% year-on-year to 45,000; those travelling to Mainland China dropped by 35.6%, while those to the Republic of Korea and Taiwan soared by 250.4% and 38.3% respectively. In the first quarter of 2016, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 314,000, down by 17.6% year-on-year. There were 106 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of March 2016, an increase of 7 year-on-year. Number of guest rooms totalled 32,000, up by 4,000 (+13.6%) year-on-year, with rooms of 5-star hotels (20,000) and 4-star hotels (8,000) rising by 11.7% and 28.4% respectively. A total of 893,000 guests checked into hotels & guesthouses in March 2016, up by 12.7% year-on-year. Guests from Mainland China (557,000) increased by 9.8%, while those from Hong Kong (145,000) surged by 44.7%. The average length of stay of guests held stable at 1.4 nights as in March 2015. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses was 76.5%, down by 0.9 percentage points year-on-year, with that of 4-star hotels and 3-star hotels leading at 79.9% and 79.7%, up by 2.4 and 5.4 percentage points respectively. In the first quarter of 2016, guests of hotels & guesthouses totalled 2,660,000, up by 13.4% year-on-year. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses stood at 77.2% and the average length of stay of guests was 1.4 nights, down by 1.9 percentage points and 0.1 night respectively. Visitor-guests accounted for 71.3% of the total overnight visitors, up notably by 3.3 percentage points year-on-year.