Hong Kong saw a 1.4% year-on-year drop in visitors in October, to 2.53 million. Cumulative arrivals for the first 10 months climbed 6% on the same period last year, to 24 million, the Tourism Board says.

As for the individual markets, Russia continued to record positive gain, with arrivals up 11%.  Arrivals from New Zealand  rose 11.8% and from Australia 3.8%, likely a reflection of the popularity of the Bledisloe Cup rugby match played in Hong Kong at  the end of October.    

Out of the total Mainland arrivals in October 2008, 772,493 - or 56.2% - arrived under the Individual Visit Scheme, 1.9% more than in the same period last year.  Cumulatively, there were 7.9 million arrivals under the Individual Visit Scheme in the first 10 months of 2008, 12.4% more than for the same period a year earlier. 

About 58.6% of October visitors stayed in the city for at least one night, 0.5 percentage points lower than a year ago.

Hotel occupancy across all categories of hotels in October was 85%. The average achieved hotel room rate across all hotel categories was $1,429 - 6.8% lower than last October.