Hong Kong saw a 12.2% year-on-year drop in visitors in July to 2.38 million, bringing the cumulative arrivals for the year's first seven months to 16.1 million - down 4.9% on the same period last year, the Tourism Board says.

Arrivals from the Mainland dropped 13.7% to 1.43 million in July. As for other short-haul market regions the decline since the outbreak of human swine flu in May has narrowed as concerns about the disease have gradually receded.

Falls were registered in arrivals from South and Southeast Asia (-9.4%), Taiwan (-11.3%), North Asia (-15.9%) and Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific (-8.6%). Increases were seen in arrivals from the Americas (+1.2%) and Europe, Africa and the Middle East (+2.2%).

About 56.7% of visitors to Hong Kong stayed in the city for at least one night, 2.9 percentage points lower than in the same month last year.