MACAO, March 29 (Xinhua) -- Visitors on package tours to China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) totalled 597,000 in February this year, up by 8.8 percent year-on-year, yet down by 25.6 percent month-to-month, the SAR's statistics service said on Thursday.

Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that in the first two months of 2018, visitors on package tours totalled 1,399,000, a surge of 29.3 percent year-on-year.

Attributable to the long Chinese Lunar New Year holidays, outbound residents using services of travel agencies increased by 15.9 percent year-on-year to 131,000. Among them, residents travelling on package tours grew by 12.4 percent to 53,000.

There were 115 hotels and guesthouses operating at the end of February 2018, an increase of 7 percent year-on-year. Number of guest rooms rose by 6.4 percent year-on-year to 39,000, with 5-star hotel rooms rising by 8.5 percent to 24,000, accounting for 61.2 percent of the total.

Number of guests of hotels and guesthouses in February 2018 rose by 6.4 percent year-on-year to 1,034,000. The average length of stay of guests went up by 0.1 night year-on-year to 1.5 nights.

The average occupancy rate of hotels and guesthouses stood at 89.2 percent, up by 2.7 percentage points year-on-year, with that of 5-star hotels reaching 92.8 percent, representing an increase of 4.8 percentage points.