Hong Kong residents made 69.7 million trips to the Mainland for business and personal purposes last year with total spending rising to $29.1 billion, up 10.8% on 2006, the Census & Statistics Department says.

Of all the trips, 33% were business travel and 67% personal.

For personal trips, 54% were to Shenzhen, 40% to other places in Guangdong and the remainder for elsewhere on the Mainland.

About 38% were same-day trips while the remainder were overnight trips with an average length-of-stay of 3.4 nights.

The average spending per person was about $620. For personal overnight trips, each person spent about $820 on average while for same-day trips people spent about $310.

Click here for details from the July 2008 issue of the Hong Kong Monthly Digest of Statistics published today.