Macau – Tourism | Discounts abound as hotels fail to fill rooms

Sofitel Macau at Ponte 16

Hotels in Macau are offering discounts of up to 35 percent over the summer months, with some including a complimentary room when customers buy just a buffet dinner, according to a report in Hong Kong’s The Standard.
However, the same hotels are still not achieving full occupancy rates, even for the first weekend in August, just over two weeks away. According to The Standard, only four out of 23 hotels operated by the six gaming concessionaires have achieved full occupancy, despite the fact that the resorts have cut their rates by 10 – 20 percent on average. Hotel Lisboa, belonging to SJM Holdings, has cut its room by as much as 35 percent.
The deputy chairman of Success Universe Group, which operates Sofitel Macau at Ponte 16, says that he expects the occupancy rate of the overall accommodation industry in Macau to reach 80 to 90 percent during the summer vacation. Hoffman Ma bases this expectation of the fact that the number of visitors to Macau and to the city’s casinos has rebounded compared with the start of the year.
He added the rebound might be partly due to aggressive promotions from the hotels that have hoped to fill sometimes more than half of the rooms in the properties in off-peak seasons.
While some analysts believe that new resorts set to open this year will further crowd a market that is already struggling to satisfy its supply, others argue that new resorts with new offerings might due their part to attract more visitors.
Wynn Macau alone will see the number of its rooms in the MSAR surge from about 1,000 to 1,700 with the opening of the Wynn Palace, scheduled for next month, and The Parisian will add hundreds more to Sands China.
The danger is that these new resorts will attract visitors away from other, existing resorts within the city, having a minimal positive effect on revenues but bringing the average occupancy rates further down. DB