Macao registered 431,880 visitor arrivals in package tours in October 2008, increasing by 17 percent from a year earlier, according to the figures released on Friday by the city's Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).

The figures showed that visitors from the Chinese mainland (293,458) and Taiwan (33,224) increased by 14.8 percent and 37.8 percent respectively, while visitors from Hong Kong (30,424) recorded a decrease of 4.7 percent in the period. In the first 10 months of 2008, visitor arrivals in package tours rose by 17.5 percent over the same period of 2007 to over 3.9 million.

Meanwhile, the number of Macao residents traveling outbound in package tours increased by 34.4 percent year-on-year to 16,316 in October 2008. The Chinese mainland (75.1 percent), Japan (six percent) and China's Taiwan (5.5 percent) were the three most popular tour itineraries. In the first 10 months of 2008, Macao residents traveling in package tours rose by 9.2 percent over the same period of 2007 to 186,458.

(Xinhua News Agency December 15, 2008)