Hong Kong's tourism industry says it notched up another strong performance in November 2007 with a total of 2,448,135 visitor arrivals, the Hong Kong Tourism Board announced today at the end of 2007.

This is the best November result on record and represents a year-on-year increase of 17.6%. Cumulative arrivals for the first 11 months now stand at 25,379,939, 11.1% more than the same period of last year and topping the 2006 full-year figure of 25.25 million.

The solid gain was spread across Mainland China and the international markets. In particular, the high-potential markets, namely South Korea (+25.8%) and the Philippines (+27.3%), showed substantial growth. Consistently registering double-digit increases in the past six months, these two markets have already surpassed their 2006 full-year performance. Other primary source markets, such as the UK, as well as such newly emerged markets as Russia and the Middle East have also passed their 2006 results.

The average occupancy across all categories of hotels in November was 93%, three percentage points higher than in November 2006. The geographic locations with the highest occupancies in November were Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok, where hotels recorded rates of 96%. The average achieved hotel room rate across all hotel categories for the month was HK$1,383, 12.1 higher than in November 2006.

Arrivals from Mainland China reached 1,291,307, an increase of 23.7% over the same month in 2006. This took the cumulative total for January to November to 13,962,650, 13.3% ahead of the same period last year. Of the Mainland arrivals in November, 670,468 or 51.9% travelled under the Individual Visit Scheme, a year-on-year increase of 38.8%. The cumulative IVS arrivals in January-November 2007 exceeded 7.71 million, which represents 55.2% of visitors from the Mainland and growth of 28.4%. Arrivals from Taiwan grew by 7.5% to 179,909. This took the island's cumulative arrivals for the first 11 months of 2007 to 2,039,158, a year-on-year increase of 2.5%.

In the long-haul market regions, the Americas enjoyed the highest growth rate at 14.7% with its 178,258 arrivals. Canada sustained its strong growth momentum at 22.9%, while arrivals from the U.S. also increased by 12.2% and those from South and Central America by 11.3%. This took the overall arrivals from the region in January-November 2007 to 1,626,808, 8.8% more than in the same period in 2006.

Europe, Africa and the Middle East also maintained the momentum, with arrivals reaching 214,842, a year-on-year increase of 13.9%. Among the individual markets in this region, the U.K. (61,257, +9.2%) provided the largest volume, while France (21,907, +18.4%) and the Middle East (15,056, +21.9%) enjoyed the greatest gain. Cumulative January-November arrivals from this region reached 2,013,273, 14.8% higher than in the same period in 2006.

Some 60.5% of all visitors to Hong Kong in November stayed in the city for at least one night, 1.9 percentage points lower than for the same month last year. The remaining 39.5% were same-day in-town visitors, who either returned home or left for another destination on the same day. Between January and November 2007, 60.9% of all visitors stayed one night or more, 1.7 percentage points lower than for the same period in 2006.

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