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Macau’s outbound package tours up in Oct

In October 2010, Macau residents travelling outbound in package tours rose by 21.2 percent year on year to 19,383, with China (78.1 percent of total); Taiwan, China (5.4 percent); Republic of Korea (3.7 percent) and Thailand (3.2 percent) being the most popular tour itineraries, according to the information from the Macau’s Statistics and Census Service.

In the first 10 months of 2010, Macau’s residents travelling in package tours totalled 206,214, up by 28.3 percent year on year.

Meanwhile, outbound residents travelling under own arrangements using services of travel agencies fell slightly by 0.3 percent year on year to 46,426 and the main destinations were Hong Kong (31.4 percent of total); China (26.7 percent); Taiwan, China (17.3 percent) and Thailand (9.1 percent). In the first 10 months of 2010, outbound residents travelling under such arrangements increased by 8.7 percent year on year to 408,997.

Information from the Statistics and Census Service released on Monday also indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours increased by 4.2 percent year on year to 396,310 in October 2010. In comparison with October 2009, visitors from China (274,805), Hong Kong (21,283), Japan (17,745) and Republic of Korea (11,794) rose by 3.8 percent, 8.2 percent, 5.0 percent and 194.9 percent respectively. In addition, visitors in package tour from Malaysia (8,995) and India (7,506) also registered remarkable increase; however, those from Taiwan, China (22,056) decreased by 11.9 percent. In the first 10 months of 2010, visitor arrivals in package tours went up by 30.2 percent year on year to 4,770,216.

At the end of October 2010, total number of available guest rooms of the hotel sector increased by 1,359 (+7.3 percent) year on year to 19,849 rooms.

A total of 628,773 guests checked into hotels and guest-houses in October 2010, up by 8.2 percent year on year, with the majority coming from China and Hong Kong. The average occupancy rate of hotels and guest-houses stood at 78.4 percent, up by 4.6 percentage points year on year; average occupancy rate of hotels was 79 percent, with 4-star hotels leading at 80.5 percent. The average length of stay of guests went up by 0.01 night to 1.5 nights. Number of guests reached 6,368,709 in the first 10 months of 2010, up by 18.2 percent over the same period of 2009.