GGRAsia – More than 12,500 rooms under construction in Macau

More than 12,500 rooms under construction in Macau

Aug 31, 2015 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

There were 22 hotel projects under construction in Macau and 30 projects undergoing government approval at the end of the second quarter of 2015, official data from the local government show.

They would together provide close to 21,100 new hotel rooms for Macau. In total 12,500 of them are already under construction. The data do not give estimated completion dates for the new hotel projects.

Macau had 29,279 hotel rooms at the end of June, up from 28,358 hotel rooms at the end of March, according to the city’s Statistics and Census Service.

The Macau government data show the majority of the new hotel room supply will be located on Cotai, where the city’s casino operators are developing new large-scale casino resorts offering, in aggregate, more than 10,200 hotel rooms.

Melco Crown Entertainment Group Ltd is opening on October 27 its majority-owned US$3.2-billion casino resort Studio City in Cotai, with a total of 1,600 room keys.

The St. Regis Macao (pictured), the fourth and final tower of the Sands Cotai Central casino resort complex, is scheduled to open on December 17. The property, developed by Sands China Ltd, will feature 400 guest rooms and suites.

The number of hotel guests in Macau however has declined for six consecutive months since January judged against year-prior periods. A total of 852,531 guests were recorded in June, down by 2.7 percent from a year earlier, according to official data.

The number of hotel guests in the second quarter of 2015 fell by 4.4 percent year-on-year to 2.54 million. The average hotel occupancy rate stood at 77.3 percent in the three months to June 30, down from 85.1 percent a year earlier.

Macau’s visitor arrivals in the seven months to July 31 decreased by 3.5 percent from the prior-year period, to 17.41 million.