Macao's average hotel occupancy rate rose by 4.4 percentage points to 73.3 percent in June this year, with five-star hotels leading at 76.4 percent, according to the figures released by Macao's Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) on Tuesday.

The DSEC said that a total of 510,018 guests checked into hotels and similar establishments in June this year, representing a year-on-year increase of 25.1 percent, and the total number of guest rooms available in local hotel sector grew by 22.8 percent from a year earlier to 16,235 rooms at the end of June 2008.

The majority of the guests still came from the Chinese mainland (43.7 percent) and Hong Kong (25.8 percent) in June, according to the DSEC.

In the first half of 2008, total number of hotel guests exceeded 3.2 million, up by 19 percent over the same period of last year, the DSEC said.

(Xinhua News Agency August 13, 2008)