Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that visitors on package tours and the average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses recorded a year-on-year decrease in August. Package tour visitors dropped by 18.8% year-on-year to 635,000, with those from mainland China (499,000), the Republic of Korea (36,000), Hong Kong (7,700) and Taiwan (60,000) falling by 18.1%, 35.0%, 26.5% and 6.0% respectively. In the first eight months of 2019, number of package tour visitors totalled 6,379,000, representing a slowdown in growth of 9.8% year-on-year.

Outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 156,000 in August, down by 1.7% year-on-year. Residents travelling under own arrangements fell by 8.4% to 105,000, with those visiting mainland China (38,000), Hong Kong (29,000) and Taiwan (13,000) decreasing by 5.4%, 21.4% and 20.4% respectively. Meanwhile, residents travelling on package tours rose by 15.4% to 51,000 on account of a 12.7% increase in those visiting mainland China (36,000). In the first eight months of 2019, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 1,204,000, up by 2.7% year-on-year.

There were 119 hotels & guesthouses operating at the end of August 2019, an increase of 3 year-on-year. Number of available guest rooms dropped slightly by 100 year-on-year to 39,000, with 4-star hotel rooms decreasing by 400 to 7,300 whereas 5-star hotel rooms remaining steady at 25,000.

A total of 1,266,000 guests checked into hotels & guesthouses in August 2019, up marginally by 0.4% year-on-year. Guests coming from the Republic of Korea (56,000) and Hong Kong (156,000) rose by 28.1% and 13.7% respectively, while those from mainland China (893,000) and Taiwan (38,000) decreased by 0.9% and 7.1%. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses dropped by 2.2 percentage points year-on-year to 93.0%; the rates of 5-star hotels (95.0%) and 3-star hotels (93.0%) fell by 1.2 percentage points and 4.0 percentage points respectively. The average length of stay of guests held steady year-on-year at 1.5 nights.

In the first eight months of 2019, guests of hotels & guesthouses totalled 9,428,000, an increase of 1.6% year-on-year. The average occupancy rate of hotels & guesthouses went up by 0.7 percentage points to 91.6%. The average length of stay of guests remained stable at 1.5 nights. Visitor-guests accounted for 69.9% of the total overnight visitors, down by 1.9 percentage points year-on-year.