Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours rose by 27.8% year-on-year to 912,000 in December 2017, but edged down by 0.4% month-to-month. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (746,000), the Republic of Korea (45,000) and Taiwan (52,000) surged by 32.1%, 23.8% and 34.8% respectively year-on-year. For the whole year of 2017, visitors on package tours totalled 8,633,000, up by 14.3% year-on-year.
Outbound residents using services of travel agencies increased by 7.9% year-on-year to 131,000 in December 2017. Among them, residents travelling on package tours grew by 7.5% to 56,000, with those going to Mainland China (38,000) rising by 12.3%. In 2017, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 1,391,000, up by 11.2% year-on-year.
There were 111 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of December 2017, an increase of 4 year-on-year. Number of guest rooms grew by 2.3% year-on-year to 37,000, with those of 5-star hotels (22,000) accounting for 60.1% of the total.
Number of guests of hotels & guesthouses in December 2017 rose by 2.5% year-on-year to 1,204,000. Guests coming from Mainland China (798,000) and the Republic of Korea (42,000) increased by 10.7% and 23.8% respectively year-on-year, while those from Hong Kong (140,000) and Taiwan (40,000) dropped by 23.0% and 12.6% respectively. The average length of stay of guests held steady year-on-year at 1.4 nights. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses stood at 92.5%, up by 2.8 percentage points year-on-year, with 5-star hotels (94.7%) and 4-star hotels (94.4%) recording relatively high rates in December, up by 4.8 percentage points and 1.7 percentage points respectively year-on-year.
For the whole year of 2017, guests of hotels & guesthouses reached 13,155,000, up by 9.6% year-on-year. Guests from Mainland China (8,637,000), the Republic of Korea (501,000) and Taiwan (493,000) grew by 13.5%, 64.7% and 3.5% respectively, whereas those from Hong Kong (1,609,000) decreased by 9.6%. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses rose by 3.6 percentage points to 86.9%, with 4-star hotels leading at 89.4%. The average length of stay of guests went up by 0.1 night year-on-year to 1.5 nights. Visitor-guests accounted for 71.8% of the total overnight visitors, down slightly by 0.2 percentage points year-on-year.