A total of 16,200 tourists from mainland China came to Macau across all forms of package tour, in the three weeks of February that benefitted from market reactivation following relaxation of Covid-19 countermeasures. The information was released on Wednesday by the city’s Statistics and Census Service.
Of the February tally of package tourists via the mainland, 46.3 percent, or 7,500, were from neighbouring Guangdong province. Mainland-originating package business was only reactivated on February 6, after a circa three-year hiatus.
Hong Kong provided 200 package tourists in February, and a further 200 came from Thailand.
In December, the Macau government had announced a subsidy scheme to tempt back mainland package visitors. The scheme offers up to MOP250 (about US$31) per night per tourist from mainland China, for tour groups that comprise at least 10 people. The application for subsidy has to be submitted by local travel agencies.
Other tourism market data for February released on Wednesday confirmed the city had 126 hotels offering accommodation that month, an increase of six venues year-on-year.
The total number of available guest rooms was 38,800 in February, up by 0.3 percent on the prior year, though room use was much lower generally in February 2022, due to pandemic-related travel constraints.
This February’s average occupancy rate market-wide for guest rooms went up by 27.5 percentage points year-on-year to 76.1 percent.
The aggregate number of guests at Macau hotels in February jumped by 78.5 percent year-on-year to 882,700. Mainland China supplied 643,300; Hong Kong 162,100; and Taiwan 10,800. Those tallies represented respectively, year-on-year increases of 62.2 percent, 806.4 percent, and 185.0 percent.
Market wide, the average length of stay of guests in February shortened year-on-year by 0.2 night, to 1.6 nights.
Across the first two months of 2023, the average occupancy rate of guest rooms of hotel establishments went up by 27.5 percentage points year-on-year to 73.6 percent. The number of guests grew by 71.7 percent year-on-year to 1.73 million, while their average length of stay shortened by 0.2 night to 1.7 nights.
