Macau’s occupancy rate averaged at around 48.3% during the Chinese New Year (CNY) Golden Week from February 11 to 17, demonstrating a contraction of 4.6% points year-on-year, the official data released last Friday showed.
The latest figures were given by the city’s accommodations, including both hotels and guest houses, and compiled by the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO).
The actual figure of occupancy rate turned out better than MGTO’s earlier forecast of around 30% — an estimate, which was gauged based on the booking data provided by local hotels pre-CNY, and announced by MGTO Director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes on an annual media brief on February 10.
In terms of the demarcation of accommodation rating, the city’s 5-star hotels outshined all other hotel classes, registering an average occupancy rate of 50.6%, down 4.7% points from the CNY Golden Week last year.
Meanwhile, 4-star hotels were narrowing the gap, with their occupancy rate averaged at 49.8%, just 0.8% points behind the first-place 5-star hotels.
It was then followed by 46.1% for 3-star hotels, 27.3% for guest houses and 24.6% for 2-star hotels.
The average daily room rate for hotel establishments in Macau stood at around MOP1,175.3 during the holiday week, down a significant 42.1% year-on-year.
The daily room rate was MOP1,444.8, MOP734.0 and MOP780.0 for the city’s 5-star, 4-star and 3-star hotels during the week-long Spring Festival holiday, down 38.7%, 51.5% and 47.0% respectively.
The daily room rates for 2-star hotels and guest houses showed the sharpest contraction, down 79.4% and 78.9% year-over-year.
Overall, the city saw an aggregate of 90,615 tourist arrivals over the CNY Golden Week in 2021, down 65.3% from 261,454 in the same period last year.
The decline was associated with the travel advisories issued by China’s municipal governments advising their residents to avoid travelling during the CNY period.
Overall, the average daily arrival numbers during the Lunar New Year stood at 12,945, falling short of the Fernandes’ previous forecast of around 16,000 to 20,000 arrivals.
President of Sands China Ltd, Wilfred Wong, previously told the mediathat he had expected “a slight delay” in the hotel room peak booking period for the group’s newly opened hotel property The Londoner, after taking into account the impact of the travel advisory.
“Some mainland tourists will avoid travelling during the Spring Festival. But they may set off trips following the festival, […] we believe the occupancy data will come to some highs after the Chinese New Year,” he projected earlier.
To some degree, the growing trend of arrivals from the Mainland during the latter half days of the Golden Week bears down Wong’s forecast.
The seventh day of the Golden Week holiday on February 17 saw a double-digit growth of 22.8%, year-over-year in mainland tourist arrivals into Macau. The daily tally marks the second consecutive day of growth — following a 5.3% increase on February 16 — and the highest annual growth rate in Mainland visitor numbers during the holiday.
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