MACAO, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- The revenue of Macao's travel agencies amounted to 9.17 billion patacas (about 1.14 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018, up by 10.4 percent year-on-year, the special administrative region's statistic service said here on Friday.

The latest report from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) showed that the expenditure of the travel agencies amounted to 8.75 billion patacas (about 1.08 billion dollars) in 2018, up by 10.6 percent year-on-year.

The DSEC report added that there were 221 travel agencies operating in 2018, an increase of 11 year-on-year. The total number of persons engaged in the sector edged up by 0.7 percent to 4,530.

Analyzed by size, travel agencies with 50 or more persons totaled 20. The revenue of these travel agencies increased by 1.7 percent year-on-year to 3.13 billion patacas (about 387.66 million dollars), which were mainly generated from rentals of coaches with driver and room reservation services.

Meanwhile, there were 12 travel agencies with 30 to 49 persons. These travel agencies recorded 1.10 billion patacas (about 136.24 million dollars) of revenue, an increase of 25.4 percent, with room reservation services taking up 56.6 percent.

There were 79 travel agencies with 10 to 29 persons, the DSEC report added. Their revenue increased by 12.2 percent to 3.80 billion patacas (about 470.65 million dollars).

The gross value added that measures the sectoral contribution to the economy totaled 1.24 billion patacas (about 153.58 million dollars), up by 10.0 percent year-on-year.

The gross surplus of the travel agencies rose by 6.4 percent to 423 million patacas (about 52 million dollars), whereas gross surplus ratio (4.6 percent) fell marginally by 0.2 percentage points, indicating that the industry was less effective in converting revenue into gross surplus compared to 2017.