Hong Kong saw a 6.3 percent year- on-year rise of the visitors in May to 2.34 million, bringing the cumulative arrivals for this year's first five months to 12 million, up 9.5 percent compare with the same period of last year, the Hong Kong Tourism Board said Wednesday.

In May, almost all long- and short-haul market regions recorded positive growth, with Mainland arrivals rising to 1.3 million, up 6.4 percent in the same month last year. Of these arrivals, 54.4 percent traveled under the Individual Visit Scheme, up 3.6 percent over a year earlier.

As for the individual source markets, the Republic of Korea enjoyed the highest growth rate at 32.6 percent. Arrivals from the emerging markets of India gained 32.2 percent while those from Russia rose 14.2 percent.

About 58.4 percent of May visitors stayed in the city for at least one night, 2.3 percentage points lower than a year earlier.

Hotel occupancy across all categories of hotels in May was 81 percent. The average achieved hotel room rate across all hotel categories was 1,140 HK dollars (146.2 U.S. dollars), 3.5 percent higher than last May.

(Xinhua News Agency June 26, 2008)