Macau’s 116 hotels and guesthouses reported a record 14.1 million guests last year, up by 7.2 percent year-on-year, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) announced on Wednesday.
The total number of guests included 9.7 million mainlanders (68.9 percent of the total), 1.5 million Hongkongers (10.7 percent of the total), and 477,000 Taiwanese (3.4 percent of the total).
The number of mainland guests rose 12.5 percent year-on-year, the only major guest segment that recorded two-digit growth. The number of guests from Hong Kong and Taiwan fell by 5.9 percent and 3.2 percent respectively.
South Koreans continued to be the hotel sector’s number-one foreign guest segment, even though their number dropped 3.4 percent year-on-year. A total of 484,200 South Koreans stayed at local hotels and guesthouses last year.
Other major guest segments came from Japan (189,300; down 0.5 percent), India (116,500; down 7.6 percent), and Malaysia (111,200; down 0.4 percent). All the other foreign guest segments stayed below 100,000 each.
The bureau announced earlier this month 35.8 million visitor arrivals last year, 39.4 percent of whom stayed at local hotels and guesthouses, according to the data released Wednesday.
Last year’s average occupancy rate of hotels and guest houses rose by 3.9 percentage points year-on-year to 91.1 percent. Guests’ average length of stay remained unchanged year-on-year at 1.5 nights.
Macau’s number of guestrooms grew by 5.8 percent year-on-year to 39,000 at the end of last year, with 5-star hotels providing 63.1 percent of the rooms, up by 9.6 percent.
Meanwhile, Macau’s visitors on package tours rose 5.5 percent to 9.09 million last year, including 7.1 million mainlanders (78 percent of the total), 696,000 Taiwanese and 616,000 South Koreans, recording an increase of 2.6 percent, 53,8 percent and 28.3 percent respectively.
