Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours rose by 12.4% year-on-year to 730,000 in March 2018, with a month-to-month increase of 19.3%. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (558,000), the Republic of Korea (50,000) and Taiwan (55,000) went up by 10.4%, 28.1% and 51.0% respectively year-on-year. In the first quarter of 2018, visitors on package tours totalled 2,144,000, up by 23.8% year-on-year.
Outbound residents using services of travel agencies increased by 25.5% year-on-year to 134,000. Among them, residents travelling on package tours grew by 28.9% to 56,000, with those going to Mainland China (32,000) rising by 4.6%. In the first quarter of 2018, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 384,000, up by 14.9% year-on-year.
There were 115 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of March 2018, an increase of 7 year-on-year. Number of guest rooms grew 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 March 2018 rose by 8.2% year-on-year to 1,143,000. Guests coming from Mainland China (768,000), the Republic of Korea (41,000), Hong Kong (131,000) and Taiwan (39,000) increased by 9.5%, 11.2%, 1.2% and 4.1% respectively year-on-year. 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 87.0%, up by 4.3 percentage points year-on-year, with the rate of 5-star hotels rising by 7.8 percentage points to 90.1%.
In the first quarter of 2018, guests of hotels & guesthouses totalled 3,352,000, up by 9.2% year-on-year. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses rose by 5.3 percentage points to 88.8%. The average length of stay of guests went up by 0.1 night year-on-year to 1.5 nights. Visitor-guests accounted for 73.0% of the total overnight visitors, down slightly by 0.6 percentage points year-on-year.