Tourism arrivals in August hit a new monthly record of 2,120,635, up 2.6% on the same month last year. It also raised cumulative arrivals for the first eight months of 2005 to 15,165,923, a year-on-year increase of 7.8%.

The Tourism Board said the increase was largely driven by robust performance in several long-haul markets. Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific registered 42.8% growth, which boosted monthly arrivals from the region to 47,947.

Europe, Africa and the Middle East grew 29.6%, to 138,739, while South and Southeast Asia saw year-on-year growth of 1.8% with 175,613 arrivals.

Modest growth was also seen from the Americas (+7.6%, 118,553), North Asia (+2.6%, 159,990) and Taiwan (+1.5%, 198,992), while the Mainland provided 1,221,159 arrivals in August, 57.6% of all visitors, down 1.4% on the previous year.

About 65.8% of all visitors in August stayed for at least one night, compared with 66.7% last year.

Occupancy across all categories of hotels and tourist guesthouses in August was 86%, a four percentage-point drop on last year that partially reflects the 4.9% rise in Hong Kong's room supply.