The average hotel occupancy rate in Macao decreased by 12.6 percent year-on-year to 60.7 percent in June 2009, with four-star hotels leading at 64.5 percent, according to the figures released on Wednesday by the city's Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).

A total of 445,756 guests checked into local hotels and similar establishments in June, down 12.6 percent year-on-year, with the majority of guests coming from the Chinese mainland (40 percent) and Hong Kong SAR (29.5 percent), the figures indicated. The average length of stay of hotel guests increased by 0.13 night year-on-year to 1.52 nights in the period.

There were some 18,128 guest rooms available in local hotel sector at the end of June, an increase of 11.7 percent over the same period of last year, while the cumulative number of hotel guests decreased by 3.2 percent year-on-year to 3.1 million in the first half of this year, the DSEC said.

In the first half year of 2009, visitor-guests of hotels accounted for 61.7 percent of the total number of tourists, up from 56.9 percent in the corresponding period of 2008, according to the DSEC.

(Xinhua News Agency August 13, 2009)