Package tour visitors slump 35%

The number of package tour visitors coming to Macau slumped 35.3% in October, according to the latest data from the Statistics and Census Service, flying in the face of a general 1.8% annual rise in total visitation during the month.
Apart from an increase of 19.2% in package tour visitors from Malaysia (5,500), the number of visitors from other countries and territories registered year-on-year declines.
Package tour visitors from mainland China (380,000) fell by 38.5% year-on-year, while those from Hong Kong (6,100) dropped 42.5% and Taiwanese package tour visitors (60,000) dipped 3.6%. Those hailing from South Korea (33,000) registered a similar decline of 37.6% in year-on-year terms.
For the first 10 months of 2019, the number of package tour visitors to Macau totaled 7.29 million, according to the Statistics and Census Service, which was similar to the corresponding figure in 2018.
There were 121 hotels and guesthouses operating at the end of October, an increase of 5 year-on-year. The number of available guest rooms edged down by 0.6% year-on-year to 38,000, of which 4-star hotel rooms decreased by 8.2% to 7,100 whereas 5-star hotel rooms inched up by 0.6% to 25,000.
The average occupancy rate of guest rooms went down by 1.7 percentage points year-on-year in October to 88.2%, while the average length of stay of guests held steady year-on-year at 1.5 nights. DB