GGRAsia – Macau 5-star room rate down 4pct y-o-y in Oct: trade

Macau 5-star room rate down 4pct y-o-y in Oct: trade

Nov 25, 2024 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

The average October nightly rate for five-star hotels in Macau declined 3.6 percent year-on-year, to MOP1,575.6 (US$196.6), though the average occupancy rate increased 8.9 percentage points year-on-year to 94.3 percent.

That is according to the latest monthly survey from Macau Hotel Association, published by the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO).

The first seven days of October was the period of the National Day holiday on the Chinese mainland, one of the peak periods for the city’s gaming and hospitality trades.

The October five-star nightly-rate was down by 1.7 percent compared to the same month in 2019, show the trade body’s data.

The Macau Hotel Association has 48 hotel members, of which 28 are five-star hotels. Most of these five-star hotels are housed within casino resorts either in Cotai or on Macau peninsula. The rest of the association’s member hotels are in either the four-star or three-star tier.

For October this year, the three-, four- and five-star categories in combination, generated an average nightly rate of MOP1,406.2, down 2.8 percent year-on-year. The average respectively for four-star and three-star hotels saw a year-on-year decline of 1.0 percent and 3.2 percent.

The average occupancy rate across all the association’s tiers was 93.5 percent that month, up 7.2 percentage points from a year ago.

So far this year, February saw the highest average room rate across all tiers of property within the association’s membership. The month included China’s Lunar New Year holiday. February’s average room rate across the three tiers stood at MOP1,544.9, while that for the five-star tier was MOP1,732.3.

As of September, Macau had 38 five-star hotels in service, with an aggregate of 25,500 guest rooms, show the most recent data from the city’s Statistics and Census Service. Five-star rooms accounted for 59.3 percent of Macau’s 43,000 hotel rooms in service that month.

In terms of the structure of the Macau visitor market in October, separate data issued on Thursday by the city’s statistics service, show while visit volume from the neighbouring mainland province of Guangdong had surpassed 2019 levels, same-day trippers continue to dominate the market.

In that month, the number of Macau overnight visitors grew 3.1 percent year-on-year to nearly 1.35 million, accounting for 43 percent of the overall 3.14 million in aggregate arrivals. The rest, or 1.79 million, were same-day trippers, a segment which grew 23.2 percent year-on-year.