Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours increased by 19.5% year-on-year to 825,464 in July 2012. Visitors from Mainland China (606,120) went up by 20.4%, with 256,537 coming from Guangdong Province; besides, those from Taiwan, China (75,261); Hong Kong (35,395) and Japan (24,717) increased by 54.2%, 14.4% and 66.1% respectively. On the contrary, visitors from the Republic of Korea (25,491) decreased by 17.9%. In the first seven months of 2012, visitors in package tours totalled 4,908,359, up by 24.8% year-on-year to account for 30.6% of the total visitor arrivals. Outbound residents in package tours surged by 73.2% year-on-year to 47,405 in July 2012. The most popular tour itineraries were Mainland China (67.5% of total) and the Republic of Korea (11.0%), with 18,782 travelling to Guangdong Province. In the first seven months of 2012, residents travelling in package tours totalled 226,436, up by 56.4% year-on-year. Meanwhile, outbound residents travelling under own arrangements using services of travel agencies increased by 18.6% year-on-year to 78,088 in July 2012; the main destinations were Mainland China (48.1% of total); Hong Kong (22.3%); and Taiwan, China (15.6%). In the first seven months of 2012, residents travelling under such arrangements increased by 39.7% year-on-year to 479,233. There were 66 hotels and 33 guest-houses operating at the end of July 2012, providing a total of 24,235 guest rooms, an increase of 2,431 rooms (+11.1%) year-on-year; guest rooms of the 5-star hotels accounted for 61.0% of the total. In July 2012, the hotels and guest-houses received 875,640 guests, up by 10.0% year-on-year; the average length of stay decreased by 0.18 night to 1.2 nights. Occupancy rate of hotels and guest-houses stood at 85.0%, down by 3.2 percentage points; occupancy rate of the hotels was 85.6%, with 4-star hotels leading at 90.1%. Number of guests increased by 11.8% year-on-year to 5,351,950 in the first seven months of 2012; occupancy rate of hotels and guest-houses stood at 82.1%, down by 0.9 percentage point. From January to July 2012, visitor-guests accounted for 64.9% of the total number of overnight visitors, higher than the 61.5% in the same period of 2011.
