Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours increased by 23.1% year-on-year to 477,072 in August 2010. In comparison with August 2009, visitors from Mainland China (350,005); Hong Kong (25,893); Japan (24,070) and the Republic of Korea (14,276) rose by 28.4%, 8.3%, 3.9% and 152.6% respectively, while those from Taiwan, China (23,455) decreased by 16.5%. In the first eight months of 2010, visitor arrivals in package tours increased by 36.9% year-on-year to 4,000,979. In August 2010, Macao residents travelling outbound in package tours up by 13.4% year-on-year to 30,048, with Mainland China (63.7% of total); Taiwan, China (8.2%); Japan (7.5%) and Malaysia (7.4%) being the most popular tour itineraries. In the first eight months of 2010, residents travelling in package tours totalled 165,712, an increase of 24.6% over 2009. Meanwhile, outbound residents travelling under own arrangements using services of travel agencies rose by 9.8% year-on-year to 50,384 and the main destinations were Mainland China (34.0% of total), Hong Kong (27.5%) and Taiwan, China (19.0%). In the first eight months of 2010, outbound residents travelling under such arrangements rose by 11.2% year-on-year to 317,709. At the end of August 2010, total number of available guest rooms of the hotel sector increased by 1,577 (+8.7%) year-on-year to 19,767 rooms. A total of 696,013 guests checked into hotels and guest-houses in August 2010, up by 10.2% year-on-year, with the majority coming from Mainland China (52.0% of total) and Hong Kong (23.6%). The average occupancy rate of the hotels and guest-houses increased by 2.2 percentage points year-on-year to 82.4% and that of the hotels reached 83.0%, with 4-star hotels leading at 85.0%. The average length of stay of the guests went up by 0.03 night to 1.5 nights. The cumulative number of guests reached 5,150,974 in the first eight months of 2010, an increase of 20.9% over the same period of 2009. In the first eight months of 2010, visitor-guests of hotels and guest-houses accounted for 60.2% of the total number of tourists, down from 61.0% in the same period of 2009.
