GGRAsia – More Macau hotels as of Nov but room tally down

More Macau hotels as of Nov but room tally down

Jan 02, 2020 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

There were 121 hotels and guesthouses operating in Macau at the end of November 2019, an increase of five establishments compared to the prior-year period, showed data from the city’s Statistics and Census Service. The number of rooms however reduced by 1.7 percent year-on-year, to about 38,200, “as a consequence of renovations undertaken in some hotels,” said the bureau in a Tuesday release.

Official data from the Macau government show there were 18 hotel projects under construction and a further 24 projects undergoing government approval as of the end of October. They would together provide the Macau market with about 11,000 new hotel rooms. The data did not give estimated completion dates for the new hotel projects.

A big part of the new supply will be on Cotai, where new large-scale resorts featuring hotels with hundreds of rooms, are being developed, and other properties are currently expanding. Some of the new projects also contain a casino.

SJM Holdings Ltd said recently it expects construction of its HKD39-billion (US$5.0-billion) Lisboa Palace on Cotai to be completed open by the second half of this year. The property will have approximately 2,000 rooms, according to SJM Holdings.

Investment analysts covering the Macau gaming market have cast doubt on whether the launch of the Grand Lisboa Palace could happen during 2020.

A nearby scheme, the under-construction Lisboeta Macau – with 820 rooms and suites – could be launched in 2020, according to Arnaldo Ho Yau Heng, director of the project’s promoter, the Macau Theme Park and Resorts. Lisboeta Macau had been announced in October 2018, when work on it was already under way.

According to Tuesday’s release from the statistics service, the guest tally at Macau hotels and guesthouses totalled just above 12.88 million in the first 11 months of 2020, an increase of 1.4 percent year-on-year. “The average occupancy rate of guestrooms (90.7 percent) and the average length of stay of guests (1.5 nights) both held steady year-on-year,” said the statistics bureau.