GGRAsia – Available rooms 85pct occupancy in May hols: Macau govt

Available rooms 85pct occupancy in May hols: Macau govt

May 05, 2023 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

The average occupancy for the available room inventory at Macau’s hotels and inns for the Labour Day break this year was 85.0 percent, with the average room rate being MOP1,804.30 (US$223.20), according to an update from Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) on Friday, citing preliminary statistics.

They covered a five-day period running from April 29 to May 3, MGTO said. It concides with a public holiday on the Chinese mainland. Hong Kong – the second-largest feeder market for Macau’s hospitality trade – only observes May 1 as a holiday within that period.

Maria Helena Senna de Fernandes, director of the tourism bureau, had stated on the sidelines of a public event on Thursday, that only about 4 percent – or 2,000 rooms out of 46,000 in the market – were not available during the holiday period.

Friday’s press release from MGTO’ did not include a breakdown of the average occupancy rate for each of the Macau hotel tiers. But it said the city’s hotel-room occupancy peaked at a daily average of 93.2 percent on April 30. That coincided with a peak 134,000 visitor arrivals – a record single-day figure since the onset of Covid-19 pandemic almost three years ago.

In a written reply to GGRAsia, MGTO said the average hotel room rate in Macau for the holiday period stood at MOP1,804.30. The city’s five-star hotels had the highest average occupancy rate, at 88.9 percent, according to the data. The average price for a five-star hotel room was MOP2,008.00, stated the tourism office.

Macau had approximately 493,000 visitors across the five-day break, with 376,000 from mainland China and 89,000 from Hong Kong, said MGTO. The holiday visitor volume was 62 percent of that for the same holiday in 2019, the tourism body also noted in its release. But in 2019, the Labour Day holiday was designated as a four-day break running from May 1 to May 4, inclusive, on the Chinese mainland.

During the 2019 period, the average occupancy of Macau’s 40,162 rooms operating at the time had been 96 percent, with an average room rate at MOP1,882.2, according to MGTO data.

In other news, Macau International Airport’s operator said in statistics released on Thursday, that an aggregate 65,888 passengers travelled in and out of the air hub in the April 29 to May 3 period this year. Of that volume, 66 percent were using Macau-mainland China routes. Another 24 percent travelled via Macau-Southeast Asia routes, and the remaining 10 percent were journeying via Taiwan.

For this year’s Labour Day break period, overall passenger volume handled by Macau’s airport recovered to “about 50 percent” of the same holiday period in 2019, said Macau International Airport Co Ltd.

(Updated at 3.20pm, May 8)