Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours totalled 704,000 in May 2018, up by 1.6% year-on-year and yet down by 6.8% month-to-month. Package tour visitors from Mainland China (540,000) and Hong Kong (11,000) dropped by 1.2% and 32.0% respectively year-on-year, while those from the Republic of Korea (46,000) and Taiwan (55,000) grew by 17.4% and 64.9%. In the first five months of 2018, visitors on package tours totalled 3,586,000, up by 15.9% year-on-year.
Outbound residents using services of travel agencies surged by 20.4% year-on-year to 136,000. Number of residents travelling on package tours increased by 10.7% to 51,000, with those going to Mainland China rising by 2.0% to 32,000 (63.2% of total). In the first five months of 2018, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 641,000, up by 15.1% year-on-year.
There were 115 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of May 2018, an increase of 8 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 61.4% of the total.
Number of guests of hotels & guesthouses in May 2018 rose by 4.7% year-on-year to 1,178,000. Guests coming from Mainland China (798,000) increased by 11.0%, while those from the Republic of Korea (40,000), Hong Kong (123,000) and Taiwan (40,000) dropped by 8.3%, 11.1% and 10.5% 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 87.0%, up by 1.8 percentage points year-on-year; the rates of 4-star and 5-star hotels were 90.4% and 90.0% respectively, up by 1.4 percentage points and 4.5 percentage points year-on-year.
In the first five months of 2018, guests of hotels & guesthouses totalled 5,712,000, up by 8.2% year-on-year. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses rose by 4.3 percentage points to 88.7%. The average length of stay of guests increased by 0.1 night year-on-year to 1.5 nights. Visitor-guests accounted for 73.6% of the total overnight visitors, down slightly by 0.1 percentage points year-on-year.