Average occupancy rates for all categories of hotels and tourist guesthouses in August was 88%, compared with 86% for the same month last year.

The HK Tourism Board said it is the highest figure this year, reflecting the continued strong recovery from the 71% average occupancy in July, 34% in June and just 18% in May.

Cumulatively, occupancy for the year's first eight months now stands at 61%, compared with 82% for the same period last year, while the average achieved hotel room rate is 7% lower at $630.

Some 1,644,878 arrivals were recorded in the month, 9.6% up on the 1.5 million arrivals in August last year.

The results mark a V-shaped recovery for the tourism industry, following year-on-year shortfalls of 64.8% in April, 67.9% in May, 38.2% in June and 5.6% in July.

Board Executive Director Clara Chong said the speed of the recovery had surpassed all expectations, thanks to the strong, all-round support of the trade in providing attractive hotel and travel offers, and other special privileges to visitors.

"The challenge ahead of us is to ensure the revival can be sustained, now that the pent-up demand has been satisfied and most of the irresistible offers have run out," she said.

"After some rapid catching up since June, we expect the pace of the recovery to become more gradual in the coming months."

Boosted by individual visits, Mainland arrivals hit an all-time high of 946,122 for the month, a 43.4% increase on August last year.

Most other markets continued to show negative year-on-year growth, although the gap is now rapidly narrowing.

Arrivals from The Americas were a modest 12.6% down, with the US showing only a 10.4% decline, compared with 41.7% in July.

Arrivals from Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific were 18.2% down in total, but New Zealand recovered to the same figure as last August. 

In the short-haul markets, arrivals from North Asia were 28.8% down, with South Korea improving to a single-digit shortfall of 9%. Arrivals from South and Southeast Asia were 16% down overall.

Cumulatively, arrivals for the first eight months now stand at 14.4% down compared with the same period last year, due to four consecutive months of substantial negative growth from April to July.

Arrivals from the Mainland, however, are showing positive overall growth of 18.6%. All other major markets are currently in negative overall growth of between 30% and 41% for the year.

In August, 33.5% of all visitors continued to other destinations on the same day as arrival, compared to 40.8% in July and 44.8% in June, showing that more of the longer-staying leisure visitors are now coming back.

For the first eight months, 61.8% of all visitors have stayed for one night or longer, compared with 64.6% for the same period in 2002.