Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours decreased by 2.6% year-on-year to 706,000 in December 2016, a slower decline compared with November. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (554,000) dropped by 4.1% year-on-year, while those from the Republic of Korea (36,000) and Taiwan (39,000) increased by 17.8% and 11.0% respectively. For the whole year of 2016, visitors on package tours totalled 7,544,000, down by 23.4% year-on-year; those coming from Mainland China (5,968,000) and Taiwan (427,000) decreased by 26.2% and 21.3% respectively, while those from the Republic of Korea (371,000) increased by 14.1%.
Outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 127,000 in December 2016, down by 4.1% year-on-year. Residents travelling on package tours decreased slightly by 0.7% year-on-year to 57,000, of which those visiting Mainland China and the Republic of Korea took up 65.5% and 12.9% respectively. For the whole year of 2016, outbound residents using services of travel agencies dropped by 14.3% year-on-year to 1,256,000. Residents travelling on package tours (501,000) decreased by 17.9%, with those going to Mainland China (342,000) falling by 27.9% while those to the Republic of Korea (51,000) surging by 135.5%.
There were 107 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of December 2016, up by 1 year-on-year. Number of guest rooms increased by 4,000 to 36,000, with that of 3-star hotels rising significantly by 3,000. Guest rooms of 5-star (22,000) and 4-star (7,700) hotels accounted for 60.1% and 21.2% of the total respectively.
In December 2016, number of guests of hotels & guesthouses increased by 11.1% year-on-year to 1,177,000, coming primarily from Mainland China (720,000) and Hong Kong (183,000), up by 14.7% and 5.2% respectively. The average length of stay of guests held stable at 1.4 nights as in December 2015. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses was 89.7% in December 2016, up by 6.2 percentage points year-on-year, with that of 4-star hotels (92.5%) exceeding 90.0%.
For the whole year of 2016, guests of hotels & guesthouses totalled 12,001,000, up by 13.6% year-on-year; guests from Mainland China (7,607,000), the Republic of Korea (304,000), Hong Kong (1,782,000) and Taiwan (477,000) grew by 12.8%, 34.3%, 17.8% and 24.7% respectively. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses stood at 83.3% in 2016, up by 1.8 percentage points year-on-year; 4-star hotels had the highest rate at 86.3%, followed by that of 5-star hotels (83.7%), which climbed up by 5.7 percentage points and 0.3 percentage points respectively. The average length of stay of guests was 1.4 nights, down by 0.1 night year-on-year. Visitor-guests accounted for 72.0% of the total overnight visitors, up by 2.6 percentage points year-on-year.