Macao registered 471,684 visitor arrivals in package tours in November 2008, up by 2.7 percent from a year earlier, according to the figures released on Monday by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).

The figures showed that visitors from the Chinese mainland (332,967), Hong Kong (34,141) and China's Taiwan (32,269) increased by 0.4 percent, 3.4 percent and 28.1 percent year-on-year respectively in the period.

In the first eleven months of 2008, visitor arrivals in package tours rose by 15.7 percent over the same period of 2007 to 4.4 million, according to the DSEC.

Meanwhile, the number of Macao residents traveling outbound in package tours increased by 27.2 percent year-on-year to 20,062 in November. Chinese mainland (77.9 percent), Japan (7.5 percent) and China's Taiwan (3.7 percent) were the three most popular tour itineraries, DSEC said.

In the first eleven months of 2008, Macao residents traveling in package tours rose by 10.7 percent over the same period of 2007to 206,520.

Source:Xinhua