MACAO, May 23 (Xinhua) -- The total spending, excluding gaming expenses, of visitors in China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) increased 3.1 percent year-on-year to 16.93 billion patacas (2.09 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter this year, the SAR's statistics service said.

Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated on Wednesday that the increase was attributable to the growth of visitor arrivals in the first quarter. The total spending of overnight visitors (1.6 billion U.S. dollars) and same-day visitors (0.5 billion U.S. dollars) rose 1.9 percent and 7.2 percent respectively.

Per-capita spending of visitors continued to record year-on-year decrease, down 14.9 percent to 1,634 patacas (201.93 U.S. dollars) in the first quarter.

In terms of spending, visitors spent primarily on shopping (48.4 percent of total), accommodation (25.1 percent), as well as food and beverage (18.9 percent).

Regarding visitors' comments in the first quarter, the proportion of visitors who were satisfied with the services of hotels (88.8 percent) edged down 0.6 percentage points quarter-to-quarter.

Meanwhile, the shares of visitors who complimented on environmental hygiene (84.9 percent), services of travel agencies (84.3 percent), services of retail shops (83.4 percent) and public facilities (82.5 percent) rose 0.8 percentage points, 1.7 percentage points, 1.2 percentage points and 2.0 percentage points respectively quarter-to-quarter.