Macau’s hotel occupancy rate could average “over 80 percent”, up to “90 percent” in July and August, while the average room rate is already at a similar level as the same period of 2019, said Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) director, Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, in remarks to the media on Tuesday.
She added that the past weekend had seen 100,000 visitors daily.
“The average hotel occupancy rate for last week has been 89 percent. So we expect that for this summer, the [hotel] occupancy level should be doing well, and hopefully we can reach an average [occupancy] rate in the range of over 80 percent to 90 percent,” said Ms Senna Fernandes.
She was speaking on the sidelines of the casino industry trade show G2E Asia Macau held at the Venetian Macao. The event is part of a joint presentation called “Asian IR Expo + Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2023″.
Macau’s average room rates were currently similar to 2019 levels, said the MGTO boss.
The average daily rate for a five-star hotel room in Macau was MOP1,482.4 (US$183.8) in May, show the latest available data compiled by the Macau Hotel Association. That was 90.0 percent of the MOP1,646.3-rate in May 2019, before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020.
Many of Macau’s large casino resorts have five-star hotels.
Macau currently has circa 47,000 hotel rooms, a tally that is 5,000 more than the pre-Covid-19 year in 2019, noted Ms Senna Fernandes in her Monday remarks. “That’s a considerable growth.”
She also noted – citing conversations with the city’s hotel operators – that they have “large” inventory in terms of hotel rooms. “Basically these operators are ready to have all of their rooms in service for summer, so we’re happy to see it.”
Some of the city’s hotel operators are still trying to resolve labour constraints, the MGTO boss remarked. She added: “Some of them still have ongoing labour recruitment and training [tasks], but as summer is an important season, they work to have all of their rooms in service, relying on certain internal [human resource] adjustment and other measures.”
Hotel operations-related roles, such as sales, back-office, and room-attendant work, still had some posts to be filled, the MGTO boss said.
Macau had, in the past weekend, seen the daily number of visitors reaching “100,000”. “So that pulls up the overall daily average of visitor arrival for the past week to 80,000, a momentum that we hope we can maintain when everyone is trying [to succeed], with their [tourism] events and products.”
For the first six months of this year, Macau’s aggregate visitor tally has already reached 11.6 million. For full-year 2023, the tourism authority is anticipating the city to see “24 million” in aggregate visitor arrivals, said the tourism boss. This number, if realised, would represent nearly 62 percent of the 39-million visitor tally in 2019.
