Meanwhile, the customs witnessed the fast increase of passenger flow since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) with a total of 170,000 passengers through the land checkpoint of Gongbei Sunday, which links the Macao Special Administrative Region with south China's Guangdong Province. The figure representing a 24 percent surge over that of the previous Sunday has come up to 70 percent of the normal amount in the pre-SARS period.

It was only the second weekend after travels were from the Chinese mainland to Macao and Hong Kong resumed. Group travels to the two special administrative regions were broken by the outbreak of SARS in May. The World Health Organization lifted its travel advisory against Guangdong and Hong Kong on May 23, as the epidemic has been basically brought under control. Guangdong Province was allowed to go ahead of other provinces and cities in the mainland to resume group travels to Macao since June 1.

The tourism recovery spurred up the hotel business with the occupation rate in some hotels in Macao went up to 80 percent during weekend. Industry insiders expected that the rise can effectively boost the market confidence, and lead to a wider revival in July.

The Macao government has launched a series of tourist promotion worth 30 million pataca (US$3.6 million) in its major tourist source markets of the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan from June to August with a target to break even last year's record of 11 million tourist arrivals.

(People's Daily June 10, 2003)