Hotel occupancy rate plunges to just 10%

Hotel occupancy in Macau hit new lows last month with five-star establishments affected most. According to statistics published yesterday by Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) the occupancy rate in five-star hotels during February 2020 plunged by 84% to just 10%.
The occupancy rate of two-star hotels and guesthouses dropped as well but less significantly, registering decreases of 33.8% and 22.3%, respectively.
Guesthouses managed to keep relatively high occupancy throughout the month, registering a 43.3% occupancy rate. The DSEC attributed the good performance of guesthouses and two-star hotels to the fact that the majority of the rooms had been booked to be provide accommodation to non-resident workers (from the mainland) due to the enforcement border crossing restrictions.
The government noted that this accommodation had been provided by employers.
Still, even when taking that into account, the number of guests that checked into the 115 hotels and guesthouses that were operating in February was only 157,000, representing a slump of 85.4% year-on-year.
In line with expectations, the guests that registered the most significant falls were those arriving from the mainland (106,000) and Hong Kong (21,000) which recorded decreases of 86.3% and 81%, respectively.
The average length of stay of guests grew by 0.3 nights year-on-year from 1.5 to 1.8 nights.
In the first two months of 2020, the average occupancy rate of guest rooms was only 50.3%, representing a drop of 42.1% when compared with the same period last year. Guests numbers at hotels and guesthouses shrank by 46.4% to 1,236,000, while their average length of stay increased by 0.1 nights to 1.6 nights.
Owing to the cancellation of most inbound and outbound tours in February, the number of visitors on package tours, including inbound package tours and local tours, plunged by 98.1%, with only 200 tours being organized. The same trend occurred with the number of outbound residents using the services of travel agencies.
In the first two months of 2020, a total of 253,000 package tour visitors were recorded, a fall of 83% year-on-year. The number of outbound residents using the services of travel agencies decreased by 72.9% to 84,000.