GGRAsia – Macau five-star hotels Apr occupancy at 6.6pct: govt

Macau five-star hotels Apr occupancy at 6.6pct: govt

May 28, 2020 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

The average occupancy rate of Macau’s hotels and guesthouses has reached a historical low in April, at 12.9 percent, according to data published on Thursday by the city’s Statistics and Census Service. The occupancy rate of Macau’s five-star hotels stood at 6.6 percent, down by 85.9 percentage points from the prior-year period, showed the data. Several of the city’s five-star hotels are located at casino resorts complexes.

The April hotel occupancy figures reflected the “continued decline” in the number of overnight visitors during the month. Such decline was impacted by what the statistics bureau said as “tightened quarantine measures” for inbound travellers since late March.

The data indicated that there was an aggregate of 33,800 available guest rooms in Macau, within 110 operating hotels and guesthouses. About 63 percent of those rooms – or 21,300 rooms – were at five-star properties.

The statistics service noted that the April hotel occupancy figures were compiled excluding the hotel properties that had been requisitioned by the Macau government for its quarantine scheme, imposed on the resident returnees and inbound travellers that needed to undergo a 14-day health observation period regarding Covid-19 infection.

Macau’s average hotel occupancy rate for the first four months of this year was 34.8 percent, down by 57 percentage points from a year ago. The steepest year-on-year decline in occupancy rate in the period was recorded in the five-star category: down 62.1 percentage points year-on-year, to just 31.2 percent.

In the first four months of 2020, the number of overnight guests that stayed in Macau’s hotels and guesthouses reached 1.58 million, down 65.9 percent from a year earlier.

The average room rate of the city’s three- to five-star hotels in the first four months of this year was MOP1,079.0 (US$135.3), representing a year-on-year decline of 21.2 percent, according to a separate set of data published by the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO). The data – compiled by local trade group, the Macau Hotel Association – covered several casino hotels across Macau peninsula and Cotai.

During the January to April period, the average room rate of Macau’s five-star hotels was MOP1,597.4, down 1.9 percent from a year ago. But a double-digit decline was seen across the three- and four-star hotels during the period, showed the MGTO figures.