The average nightly cost of a Macau five-star hotel room in October was MOP1,571.7 (US$196.1), down 1.8 percent year-on-year, while the average occupancy rate for the tier was 94.2 percent, flat from a year ago.
That is according to the latest monthly survey from the Macau Hotel Association, published by the Macao Government Tourism Office.
The survey data were drawn from the 48 hotels that are members of the association, 27 of them five-star properties. Most of those five-star hotels are within casino resort complexes in the city. The rest of the association’s hotel members as of October were in either the four-star or three-star category: a few in casino resorts, but most not.
The city’s tourism market saw a 10.8-percent year-on-year increase in visitor arrivals in October at just over 3.47 million, according to data from Macau’s Statistics and Census Service. The month encompassed China’s National Day festive season, also known as the October Golden Week. The holiday period brought 1.14 million visitors to the city from October 1 to October 8.
But the number of overnight visitors for October as a whole, grew by only 1.7 percent to nearly 1.37 million, outpaced by the 17.6-percent growth in the number of same-day visitors.
The October hotel survey results took the city’s five-star average room rate of the first 10 months of this year to MOP1,512.8, down 4.8 percent year-on-year, according to Macau Hotel Association data. The tier’s average occupancy rate was 94.4 percent in the January to October period, up 2.3 percentage points from a year ago.
Average occupancy rate across all hotel tiers within the association was 93.6 percent in the first 10 months of this year, up 2.1 percentage points year-on-year. Average room rate across the three tiers was MOP1,352.5, down 3.2 percent.
The latest association survey indicates the average nightly cost of a Macau five-star hotel room has declined year-on-year for 16 consecutive months.
Five-star accommodation dominates Macau’s hotel market. As of September – the most recent figures available – the city had 26,200 five-star hotel rooms, nearly 60 percent of the 44,000 hotel rooms in aggregate, according to a separate set of data from the Statistics and Census Service. The government’s aggregate data includes categories below three star.
The tally of Macau five-star rooms was up 2.9 percent from a year ago, statistics-service data show.
