MACAO, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- Guests of Macao's hotels and guesthouses reached 14,107,000 in 2018, up by 7.2 percent year-on-year, with those from the mainland increasing rapidly, the special administrative region (SAR)'s statistic service said here on Wednesday.

The latest data from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that in 2018, the guests coming from the mainland rose by 12.5 percent to 9,717,000, whereas those from South Korea (484,000), China's Hong Kong SAR (1,515,000) and China's Taiwan (477,000) dropped by 3.4 percent, 5.9 percent and 3.2 percent respectively.

The average occupancy rate of hotels and guesthouses went up by 3.9 percentage points year-on-year to 91.1 percent in 2018, with five-star hotels leading at 92.4 percent, an increase of 4.6 percentage points. The average length of stay of guests held steady year-on-year at 1.5 nights.

In December 2018, the number of guests in hotels and guesthouses rose by 4.8 percent year-on-year to 1,263,000. Guests coming from the mainland (863,000) increased by 8.2 percent, whereas those from South Korea (42,000), China's Hong Kong SAR (136,000) and China's Taiwan (38,000) decreased.

The average occupancy rate of hotels and guesthouses went up by 1.1 percentage points year-on-year to 94.7 percent in December, and the average length of stay of guests held stable at 1.4 nights.

There were 116 hotels and guesthouses operating at the end of 2018, an increase of five year-on-year. The number of guest rooms grew by 5.8 percent year-on-year to 39,000, and five-star hotels provided 25,000 rooms, up by 9.6 percent and accounting for 64.1 percent of the total room number.