Search China Travel News:

Customs of China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) handled some 300,000 passengers on the Labor Day holiday, some 50,000 more than the same period of last year.

According to figures from the Macao Tourist Office Monday, some300,000 passengers traveled via Macao's five main checkpoints on Sunday, the first day of the week-long holiday on China's mainland.

Macao's customs linking to the Gongbei Checkpoint of neighboring Zhuhai City in Guangdong handled the largest passenger flow recording 240,000 entries and exits.

The Tourist Office observed that the increase was mainly attributed to the surging number of tourists coming under the mainland's facilitated individual travel (FIT) scheme on Macao-bound tours, since the number of group travels went down by some 50 percent on average on the holiday.

It said that the decrease in group travels has induced losses in hotel revenues, since the hotel occupancy rate dropped by 20 percent on averaged on the first day of the holiday, compared withthe same period of last year.

The bureau had forecast over 200,000 visitors from the Chinese mainland to flush in Macao under the FIT scheme in the week-long holiday, which would constitute 64 percent of all tourists entering Macao during the period.