Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours increased by 24.8% year-on-year to 913,613 in August 2012. Visitors from Mainland China (674,949) went up by 28.3%, with 280,952 coming from Guangdong Province; besides, those from Taiwan, China (77,749); Hong Kong (36,183); Republic of Korea (33,169) and Japan (27,518) increased by 41.2%, 4.0%, 8.6% and 36.4% respectively. In the first eight months of 2012, visitors in package tours (5,821,972) increased by 24.8% year-on-year to account for 31.1% of the total visitor arrivals. Outbound residents in package tours surged by 55.8% year-on-year to 41,344 in August 2012. The most popular tour itineraries were Mainland China (72.6% of total) and the Republic of Korea (7.2%), with 19,807 travelling to Guangdong Province. In the first eight months of 2012, residents travelling in package tours totalled 267,780, up by 56.3% year-on-year. Meanwhile, outbound residents travelling under own arrangements using services of travel agencies increased by 18.1% year-on-year to 79,971 in August 2012; the main destinations were Mainland China (47.4% of total); Hong Kong (22.5%); and Taiwan, China (15.5%). In the first eight months of 2012, residents travelling under such arrangements increased by 36.1% year-on-year to 559,204. There were 66 hotels and 33 guest-houses operating at the end of August, providing a total of 24,266 guest rooms, an increase of 2,143 (+9.7%) year-on-year, of which guest rooms of the 5-star hotels accounted for 61.1% of the total. In August 2012, the hotels and guest-houses received 881,716 guests, up by 8.8% year-on-year; the average length of stay decreased by 0.18 night to 1.3 nights. Occupancy rate of hotels and guest-houses stood at 87.5%, down by 1.0 percentage point; occupancy rate of the hotels reached 88.1%, with 4-star hotels leading at 90.6%. Number of guests increased by 11.4% year-on-year to 6,233,666 in the first eight months of 2012; occupancy rate of hotels and guest-houses stood at 82.8%, down by 0.9 percentage point. From January to August 2012, visitor-guests accounted for 64.5% of the total number of overnight visitors, higher than the 61.2% in the same period of 2011.
