Tourist arrivals in Hong Kong rose 8.7 percent year on year to more than 20.76 million between January and October, the city's tourism board said Wednesday.

 

It said the tourist arrivals in the month of October reached 2.19 million, up 2.3 percent from the same period last year.

 

In October, more than 1.35 million visitors, or 62 percent, stayed in Hong Kong for at least one night, with the remainder, 834,000 or 38 percent, classified as same-day in-town visitors.

 

Arrivals from key regional source markets all registered increases, except those from the Mainland which fell 2.8 percent to 1,083,361 and Taiwan which dropped 5 percent to 184,003. Visitors from South and Southeast Asia grew 18.4 percent to 259,416; North Asia 161, 565, up 6.7 percent; Europe, Africa and the Middle East 224,216, up 9.3 percent; the Americas 169,692, up 5.4 percent; and Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific 65,041, up 11.5 percent.

 

Mainland visitors represented 49.4 percent of October's arrivals. Of these, 539,808, or 49.8 percent, traveled under the Individual Visit Scheme, 6 percentage points more than the same month last year.

 

Hotel occupancy across all categories of hotels and tourist guesthouses in October was 85 percent. This is three percent lower than the same month last year, which can be partly explained by the 4 percent increase in hotel-room supply in the intervening 12 months.

 

(Xinhua News Agency November 30, 2006)