Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) announced on Thursday that visitor arrivals to Hong Kong in the first seven months of this year reached over 14.38 million, a 10.3 percent year-on-year increase.

According to a press release from the HKTB, July tourist arrivals came to over 2.18 million, up 5.7 percent over last year' s same period.

In the first seven months, a total of 7.90 million of Chinese mainland tourists visited Hong Kong, a year-on-year increase of 12.4 percent.

The number of arrivals to Hong Kong in July under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) reached 611,844, 51.1 percent of the total, representing 15.9 percent growth over July 2005. This took the cumulative January-July IVS total to more than 3.77 million, 47.7 percent of overall Chinese mainland arrivals.

Between January and July, 2006, 62.4 percent of all visitors stayed for one night or more, 0.5 percentage point lower than in the first seven months of 2005.

Hotel occupancy across all categories of hotels and tourist guesthouses in July was 88 percent, one percentage point higher than for the same month in 2005. This is despite the fact that Hong Kong's hotel-room supply grew by 3.5 percent between July, 2005 and July 2006.

(China Daily August 24, 2006)