Package tour visitors drop 35% in September

Package tour visitors dropped 35.7% year-on-year in September, official data released yesterday showed, rounding out the first three quarters of the year with a 4.5% contraction.

According to the data released by the Statistics and Census Service, the number of package tour visitors in September amounted to 448,000. Apart from an increase in package tour visitors from Malaysia (4,300), all other countries and territories registered decreases, with those from mainland China (323,000), South Korea (32,000), Hong Kong (6,600) and Taiwan (58,000) dropping by 39.8%, 37.6%, 29.9% and 3% respectively.

September package tour arrivals bring the total number for the first three quarters of 2019 to over 6.79 million. Data released earlier in October showed that total visitor arrivals for the first three quarters had surpassed the 30-million mark, representing growth of 17% year-on-year. The growth was led by a 30.6% surge in the number of same-day visitors to 15.93 million.

At the end of the third quarter, there were 121 hotels and guesthouses operating in Macau. The number of available guest rooms edged down by 0.6% year-on-year, on account of a 7.3% drop in the number of four-star hotel rooms. The number of five-star hotel rooms held steady at 25,000, accounting for the majority of Macau’s 39,000 rooms in total.

At the same time, the city’s guest rooms hosted 1.11 million visitors in September, up by 2% year-on-year. Guests coming from South Korea (42,000), Hong Kong (153,000) and Taiwan (44,000) rose by 5.5%, 30.9% and 7.7% respectively, while those from mainland China (754,000) inched down by 0.7%.

In the first three quarters of 2019, guests of hotels and guesthouses totaled 10.54 million, up by 1.7% year-on-year. The average occupancy rate of hotels and guesthouses rose marginally by 0.4 percentage points to 90.8%, while the average length of stay of guests remained stable at 1.5 nights. DB