Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours totalled 597,000 in February 2018, up by 8.8% year-on-year and yet down by 25.6% month-to-month. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (450,000) and Taiwan (56,000) rose by 11.6% and 55.3% respectively year-on-year, while those from the Republic of Korea (46,000) dropped by 6.1%. In the first two months of 2018, visitors on package tours totalled 1,399,000, a surge of 29.3% year-on-year.
Attributable to the long Lunar New Year holidays, outbound residents using services of travel agencies increased by 15.9% year-on-year to 131,000. Among them, residents travelling on package tours grew by 12.4% to 53,000, with those going to Mainland China (37,000) rising by 10.5%. In the first two months of 2018, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 249,000, up by 9.8% year-on-year.
There were 115 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of February 2018, an increase of 7 year-on-year. Number of guest rooms rose by 6.4% year-on-year to 39,000, with 5-star hotel rooms rising by 8.5% to 24,000, accounting for 61.2% of the total.
Number of guests of hotels & guesthouses in February 2018 rose by 6.4% year-on-year to 1,034,000. Guests coming from Mainland China (732,000) and the Republic of Korea (38,000) increased by 15.0% and 5.6% respectively year-on-year; meanwhile, guests from Hong Kong (109,000) and Taiwan (36,000) dropped by 13.6% and 18.3% respectively. The average length of stay of guests went up by 0.1 night year-on-year to 1.5 nights. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses stood at 89.2%, up by 2.7 percentage points year-on-year, with that of 5-star hotels reaching 92.8%, representing an increase of 4.8 percentage points.
In the first two months of 2018, guests of hotels & guesthouses totalled 2,210,000, up by 9.8% year-on-year. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses rose by 5.9 percentage points to 89.8%. The average length of stay of guests went up by 0.1 night year-on-year to 1.5 nights. Visitor-guests accounted for 72.4% of the total overnight visitors, down slightly by 0.6 percentage points year-on-year.