Most of Macau’s luxury hotels in casino resorts still had – as of Wednesday – rooms available for the upcoming week-long break encompassing National Day, according to checks by GGRAsia.
China’s State Council has designated the holiday period as October 1, a Saturday, to October 7, a Friday, inclusive. It is sometimes also referred to by investment analysts and the travel trade, as “autumn golden week”, and in pre-pandemic times has been an important sales period for Macau casinos and hotels.
GGRAsia’s occupancy survey drew on information it collated from the official booking websites of the relevant casino-resort hotels. As of Wednesday, only six out of 23 local five-star hotels – most of them establishments at Cotai casino resorts – had seen at least three nights fully booked for the festive period.
The Emerald Tower and Skylofts accommodation at MGM Cotai – a casino hotel complex off the Cotai strip, promoted by MGM China Holdings Ltd – are sold out for most nights of the break. Wynn Palace, a Cotai casino hotel promoted by Wynn Macau Ltd, has four out of the seven nights fully booked.
The Banyan Tree Macau, located within the Galaxy Macau casino resort in Cotai promoted by Galaxy Entertainment Group, had three nights booked out. Galaxy Hotel and Hotel Okura Macau, also at the Galaxy Macau resort, had respectively six out of seven nights fully accounted for.
Sands Macao casino hotel, a Macau peninsula property run by Sands China Ltd, has already seen all seven nights booked up for the National Day break.
Two luxury hotels run by Sands China among its Cotai collection of properties – the Londoner Macao Hotel and Londoner Court at the Londoner Macao resort – have seen at least four nights sold for the holiday period. Neither of those two high-end hotels is, however, classified by the local tourism authority as five-star.
On Thursday, Cheng Wai Tong, a deputy director of the Macao Government Tourism Bureau, told local media that in an “optimistic scenario” the city might receive up to 175,000 visitors during the week-long holiday period encompassing National Day.
He thought the daily tally was likely to be between 20,000, up to as much as 25,000.
Traditionally, many of Macau’s vistors are day-trippers from next-door Guangdong province, rather than people staying overnight.
In early September, China’s National Health Commission had advised citizens against travelling long distances during the autumn festive period, including the Mid-Autumn Festival in early September, as well as autumn golden week.
Rooms available
The other luxury hotels that were surveyed by GGRAsia in relation to the National Day break, still had rooms available for booking for most of the nights of the upcoming holiday. They included: Grand Lisboa and Hotel Lisboa, on Macau peninsula, with on-site casino operations run by SJM Holdings Ltd; and the latter firm’s Cotai property, Grand Lisboa Palace.
Also checked were MGM Macau, promoted by MGM China and located on Macau peninsula; and the hotel at casino resort complex Wynn Macau also in the downtown district, promoted by Wynn Macau Ltd.
Other upmarket properties surveyed were: Nüwa, Morpheus, and Grand Hyatt Macau, at City of Dreams Macau, a complex promoted by Melco Resorts and Entertainment Ltd. That firm’s Altira Macau casino hotel in Taipa was also checked by GGRAsia.
Also on the list of high-end properties examined by GGRAsia were: JW Marriott Hotel Macau and The Ritz-Carlton, Macau, both at the Galaxy Macau casino resort, as well as Galaxy Entertainment’s StarWorld Hotel on Macau peninsula.
The booking outlook of most Sands China properties was also examined. Those venues also included: the Venetian Macao, the Four Seasons Hotel Macao, the St Regis Macao, the Conrad Macao, and the Sheraton Grand Macao.
The average nightly rates at most of those hotels were higher than for the Labour Day holiday period encompassing May 1, the most-recent prior holiday season for consumers from the Chinese mainland. Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, mainland China has been the only place to have a largely quarantine-free travel arrangement with Macau.
During the Labour Day holiday season – which ran from April 30 to May 4 this year – the average room rate at Macau five-star hotels was MOP1,033.30 (US$127.80), according to Macao Government Tourism Office data. The average occupancy of five-star hotels at the time was 60.1 percent, with the occupancy for all hotel categories at 59.5 percent.
(Updated Sept 30, 9.32am)
