January tourist arrivals hit 1,893,078, up 8.3% on last year and breaking the month's record of 1.75 million.

The Tourism Board said as the Lunar New Year holiday fell in January last year but February this year, a direct comparison is difficult, especially for individual markets. Generally the Lunar New Year month is a low season for business travel, but a peak period for leisure traffic.

The three long-haul market regions from where typically around 40% of arrivals are business-related, all showed strong comparative growth, with arrivals from Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific up 48.1% to 51,552, those from Europe, Africa and the Middle East up 44.6% to 120,018, and those from the Americas up 37.8% to 120,362.

Other market regions to perform exceptionally well were North Asia (+61.4%, 169,600 arrivals) and South and Southeast Asia (+49.6%, 164,523).

But Mainland arrivals showed a rare fall in year-on-year growth, easing 4.5% to 1,065,487, as last year's January arrivals were boosted by the Golden Week holiday, whereas the same peak travel surge will not be seen until the February results this year. Taiwan, for similar reasons, showed a 3.6% drop to 164,183.

Modest growth

The board's Executive Director Clara Chong said it is very likely the picture will be reversed in February, with arrivals from the long-haul markets easing off but the Mainland surging.

"We already know that Mainland arrivals were very strong over the Lunar New Year period, especially amongst individual travellers, with the International Chinese New Year Night Parade and other festive attractions proving a popular draw. We also drew a lot of family groups from around Southeast Asia for this event," she said.

Ms Chong said given the very high starting base, with the Mainland and a number of other key source markets having achieved record arrivals last year, the board set a fairly conservative target of 22.9 million arrivals for this year, representing an increment of over one million arrivals, on top of the 6.3 million growth achieved last year. 

"We also have to bear in mind that with Disneyland not opening until later in the year, some travellers may choose to delay their visit. Hence we are predicting more modest growth this year, but another surge in 2006," she said.

More frequent visits

On length of stay, the board's forecast is 3.7 nights, same as last year but higher than the 3.6 nights achieved in 2002, despite the continued growth in the number of Mainland travellers under the Individual Visit Scheme who tend to visit more often, but for shorter periods.

In January, 64.4% of all visitors stayed one night or longer, compared with 64.7% in January 2004. The remaining 35.6% were classified as "same-day in-town" visitors, departing for another destination on the same day as arrival, a trend reflecting Hong Kong's increasing importance as a regional transport hub.

The average occupancy rate across all categories of hotels and tourist guesthouses was 88%, the highest January figure since 1989.

All different hotel categories and locations performed well with those in Wan Chai, Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui achieving 90% occupancy. The average achieved hotel room rate was $906, growth of nearly 23% on the January 2004 figure.