Hotel sector bullish on holidays as search traffic for local OTAs up 130% y-o-y
The hotel sector has been seeing a pick-up in arrivals during the holiday period at an accelerated pace in the past two weeks, the Macau Hotel Association observed. Hence, the seven-day holidays are looking stronger compared to previous holidays this year such as Mid-Autumn and May Labor Day holidays.
The hotel sector, along with the tourism sector, is gearing up for the upcoming Golden Week National Holidays that will commence tomorrow – a holiday that the city has been awaiting, as tourism has been on hold.
Last year, the week-long holiday was an extraordinary one for the SAR – a city highly-dependent on tourism — following to the blows dealt by Covid-19 that led to quarantine for arrivals into the neighbouring region.
Official figures showed that there were only 8,159 tourist arrivals recorded during the holiday, typically one of the city’s busiest times, a stunning decline of 94% compared to last year — and a disappointment for local retailers and the tourism sector generally.
However, Macau may see some positive numbers this year.
According to vice-chairman of the Macau Hotel Association, Rutger Verschuren, the search traffic for Macau on main online travel agents (OTAs) has increased by 130% over this National Holiday as compared to last year, particularly the traffic of October 1 to 3, which is double than that of October 4 to 7.
“Locally, Chung Yeung Holiday also coincides during this weeklong holiday in the mainland, thus we also see an uptick on October 3 for Macau-local Staycations,” the hotelier told the Times.
“Bookings for October 5 to 7 still need to catch up, but with the booking lead time mostly for a three-day booking window, we still have hope for some last-minute pick-up for these days, but at lower rates than the first three days,” he added.
Verschuren revealed that the first three busy days will see healthy room rates for the first time this year, even though they are 30% lower than pre-Covid Holiday rates, while the three to four days of the Golden Week will see much lower rates.
Such a forecast echoes similar sentiments from the Macau Hoteliers & Innkeepers Association, who remain highly confident about business performance during the holidays.
The group anticipates the hotel occupancy rate to further elevate to above 70%, with most of the customers projected to extend their stays to three days.
“Overall, the Cotai’s integrated resorts lead in attracting guests for gaming and leisure over this holiday by having large room blocks reserved for gaming patrons,” Verschuren added.
Meanwhile, Zhuhai authorities have called on residents to reduce visits to other cities as much as possible due to the scattered Covid cases in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, which are at single digit increments on a daily basis.
Following this holiday, the sectors are eyeing the issuance of group package tours to Macau and eVisas under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS), which is set to be a massive boost for the SAR’s gaming and tourism operators, which have been negatively affected since the pandemic began in early 2020.
