The Palestinian hotel activity and the number of tourists have significantly declined in the occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) in the past five years, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) reported Thursday.
"Since September 2000, there was a clear drop in the main indicators of hotel activity, because of the Israeli measures against the Palestinian foundations," PCBS said Thursday.
Compared to the same quarter of 1999, the percentage occupancy of rooms declined by 73.4%, while the number of guests declined by 75.5% and the number of nights declined by 78.2%, the PCBS stated.
It added that such drop is considered as the lowest in the previous three years, which reflects the improvement of this indicators during this period.
Such figures are the results of the main findings of the Hotel Survey for fourth quarter 2004.
As results indicate, the total number of hotels in OPT is 124 hotels, including the temporary closed hotels, 80 of those hotels are operating and offered 3,554 rooms with a total of 7,575 available beds in December 2004, PCBS said.
It added that during the fourth quarter 2004, the total number of guests to the Palestinian Territory hotels reached 24,365 persons, of which 42.7% of them were Palestinian guests, and 21.0% were from the European Union countries, while total number of guest nights was 62,425 nights, where 38.4% of those nights were occupied by Palestinian guests, 26.7% by the guests whom arrived from European Union countries, and 12.9% of those nights were occupied by the guests whom arrived from United State of America and Canada.
