Beijing sees 3.3 pct more overseas tourists in Jan-May period  


BEIJING, June 15 (Xinhua) -- Beijing received 1.93 million overseas tourists from January to May, up 3.3 percent from a year earlier, the municipal bureau of statistics said Wednesday.

Foreign tourists totalled 1.64 million, an annual rise of 3.8 percent, while tourists from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan numbered 285,000, up 0.5 percent, it said in a statement.

The United States, the Republic of Korea and Japan were the top three overseas tourist sources, contributing a little more than a third of the total, it said.

The number of tourists from America and the Republic of Korea soared 18.7 percent and 0.2 percent to 295,000 and 203,000, respectively. But the number of Japanese tourists fell 25.2 percent to 163,000 in wake of the destructive earthquake and tsunami in March.