Tourist arrivals in Macao by group leapt a year-on-year 30.9 percent in January, defying a fall anticipated by many on the fact that the Chinese lunar new year, ared-letter holiday usually with a tourist boom, falls in January last year but in February this year.

The Statistics and Census Services said Thursday that the special administrative region (SAR) received 145,000 group tourists in January. Of the total, 101,000 were from China's inland, followed by those from Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong.

An upgraded tourism image of Macao, paired with China's inland loosening its restrictions on Macao-bound tours, mainly by allowing many more travel agencies to handle such tours, was a boon to Macao's tourism business, an overwhelming part of the economy, the authorities said.

In January, hotels posted an occupancy rate of 57.4 percent in general, up slightly 0.9 percentage points from a year earlier, but the figure for three-star hotels reached as much as 71.3 percent. A major part of their guests were visitors from China's inland, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

On the other hand, the Macao residents traveling overseas plunged 42 percent in number to 11,600 in the month, much of it being blamed on the skew of the two Spring Festivals. China's inland became the most popular destination for them -- luring 76.3 percent of all the tourists, who also visited Thailand and Japan.

( Xinhua News Agency March 15, 2002)