Inbound package tour visitors to Macau tallied nearly 1.50 million in the first nine months this year, up 101.2 percent year-on-year, showed data published on Tuesday by the city’s Statistics and Census Service.
The volume of package visitors from mainland China, Macau’s main tourism feeder market, went up 91.0 percent in the calendar year to September 30, at just over 1.33 million.
Those classified as package holidaymakers from overseas markets – i.e., places outside the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan – amounted to 142,400, a 276 percent improvement on the prior-year period.
In terms of neighbouring markets in Asia-Pacific, the volume of package visitors from South Korea (58,000) and India (18,700) leapt year-on-year by 387.1 percent and 929.8 percent respectively.
There were 144 hotels open to the public as of the end of September, an increase of seven venues year-on-year. But the total number of available guest rooms in the market dropped by 3.3 percent to 44,200.
In the first three quarters, the average occupancy rate of guest rooms rose by 4.8 percentage points year-on-year to 85.4 percent.
The occupancy rates for five-star hotels (87.5 percent), four-star hotels (81.2 percent) and three-star venues (82.9 percent) showed respective growth of 6.0 percentage points, 3.0 percentage points and 2.4 percentage points.
In the nine months to September 30, the total of hotel guests was nearly 10.9 million, up 11.2 percent year-on-year, and beating by 3.3 percent the equivalent trading period in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic.
