Visitor arrivals to Hong Kong reached 2,834,178 in August, representing a 5.8% year-on-year increase, the Tourism Board announced today.

Reversing the downward trend in the previous three months, August's increase was due to the lower base of arrivals during the Olympics last year when visits by long-haul travellers were impacted by the Mainland visa policy adjustment, while many Mainlanders stayed home for the games.

All long-haul market regions achieved positive gains in August, when compared with the substantial shortfall in the same period last year. These included the Americas and Europe, and Africa and the Middle East, which registered increases of 9.7% and 10.4%.

For short-haul regions, North Asia continued to be affected by the decrease in outbound travel in South Korea but the gap narrowed from 34.1% in May to 10.1% in August.

Taiwan continued the downward trend owing to the impact of cross-strait direct links. The shortfall has, however, narrowed to 3.7%. The Mainland recorded a year-on-year increase of 9.2% as consumer travel sentiment has improved.

Year-to-date Mainland arrivals rise

Total visitor arrivals in the first eight months of the year reached 18,909,255, which was 3.4% lower than the same period last year. With the exception of the Mainland market, which achieved a positive gain of 2.6% in its arrivals year-to-date, all other long- and short-haul markets continued to show negative growth.

For the long-haul regions the cumulative arrivals dropped 10.1% year-on-year to 2,699,633. For the short-haul regions, excluding Mainland and Macau, arrivals totalled 4,245,244, a shortfall of 12.7% over the same period of last year.

Overall 59.3% of all visitors to Hong Kong in August stayed for at least one night, 1.1 percentage points down on the same month last year.

Almost 10.85 million or 57.4% of total arrivals stayed in the city for at least one night during the year's first eight months, compared with 58.7% during the same period last year.

Hotel occupancy in August was 82%, three percentage points lower than August 2008. Hotels in Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok had the highest occupancy, recorded an average occupancy rate of 87%. The average achieved hotel room rate was $882, 20.3% lower than in August 2008.