The average occupancy rate of hotels in Macao rose slightly by 0.6 percentage point to 72.9 percent, with four-star hotels leading at 77.5 percent, according to the latest figures released Monday by the Statistics and Census Bureau(DSEC) of the Special Administration Region.

The bureau said that the total number of guest rooms available in local hotel sector grew by 24.4 percent from a year earlier to 16,234 at the end of May this year.

In May, a total of 544,151 guests checked into local hotels and similar establishments, representing a year-on-year increase of 19.9 percent, and the majority of the guests came from the Chinese Mainland (48.6 percent) and Hong Kong (22.7 percent), according to the DSEC.

The total number of hotel guests reached 2,697,570 in the first five months of 2008, up by 17.9 percent over the same period of 2007, and visitor-guests staying in hotels accounted for 43.1 percent of the total number of tourists, up from 42.7 percent in the corresponding period of 2007, according to the DSEC.