Fewer hotel guests in 1H despite high occupancy rate

[Photo: Renato Marques]

Despite a high occupancy rate of 90.4% among hotel guest rooms in Macau in the first half (1H) of this year, the number of hotel guests declined during the period, according to official statistics.

The latest release from the Statistics and Census Service on this matter noted that, despite a 1.3% increase in the occupancy rate compared with the first half of last year, the number of guests (7.127 million) declined by 1.1%.

Among those staying at local hotel units, guests from the mainland totaled 5.214 million, accounting for 73.2% of the total, while those from Hong Kong (857,000) represented a 12% share. Stays by both mainland and Hong Kong residents decreased by 2.5%.

Meanwhile, international guests totaled 662,000, up 12.3% year on year. International guests accounted for 9.3% of the market share.

Among international guests at local hotel units, those from South Korea (191,000), Thailand (54,000), India (48,000) and the U.S. (34,000) increased by 13%, 43.5%, 16.1% and 27.8%, respectively, while those from Japan (45,000) and Malaysia (42,000) decreased by 5.6% and 6%, respectively.

Higher-rated hotels grow

Analysis by hotel type shows that in the first half of this year, occupancy rates for 5-star hotels (93.8%) and 4-star hotels (87.4%) grew year on year by 1.4% and 4.3%, respectively. On the other hand, occupancy at 3-star hotels (84.4%) dropped by 1%.

As is widely known, a large percentage of rooms in 5-star hotels are pre-booked by casinos and reserved for casino patrons, particularly in the Cotai area. This usually keeps occupancy rates for these properties close to full, regardless of how many guests actually use them.

Tour groups down 16.7%

During the same period, the number of inbound package tour visitors totaled 845,000, down 12.6% year on year. The number of tour visitors from the mainland, which accounted for 80.6% of all tour visitors, fell further by 16.7% to 681,000.