The Government Tourist Office adopted a series of measures to prevent the spread of SARS, according to a press release by the office today (17 April).

The followings were the precautionary actions that the Government Tourist Office had taken to curb SARS according to the press release :

- Preventive instructions were given to travel agencies, hotels and restaurants.

- Travel agencies and hotels were urged to enhance the exchange of information, including the rate of hotel occupancy and numbers of package tours.

- Travel agencies and hotels were supplied with health advises leaflets prepared by Health Bureau to forward to tourists and residents. During Easter holiday, health advises leaflets would be distributed to every hotel room.

- a thorough contact list of tourism related companies would be compiled. The list would include all the travel agencies, hotels, tour guides, restaurants, car rental companies, pubs and karaokes of Macao.

- Contacts with the Macao Hotel Association, the Macao Tour Guide Assocation and the three tour agency organizations would be maintained actively.

- Hygiene instructions would be released by the Catering Association released to all restaurants as well as publicised on newspaper. Starting from this week, the association would deliver face masks to restaurants. Up to now, 300 restaurants had applied for face masks.

- The Health Bureau would hold symposiums with tourism related companies and explained them the ways to prevent SARS. All members of tourism and catering associations were asked to abide by the instructions.

- The Health Bureau had prepared a set of PowerPoint with guidelines to prevent SARS. The bureau would send the PowerPoint to tourism related companies and upload it to the internet.

- Cyberlinked the website of the Government Tourist Office with website of the Government Information Bureau, where latest information of SARS were available.

Meanwhile, according to the press release, hotel occupancy rate reached 50-60% during Saturdays and Sundays, while average rate clinched 40% currently.