Boosted by the Chinese New Year holiday, Macau’s hospitality industry recorded 774,965 guests in February, an increase of 7.5 percent on the same month of last year, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) announced Tuesday.
February’s number of hotel guests exceeded the local population, which stood at 582,000 at the end of last year, by 33 percent, The Macau Post Daily pointed out.
This year’s Chinese New Year fell in February. Last year it fell in January.
Guests’ average length of stay remained unchanged at just 1.4 nights.
Mainlanders and Hongkongers accounted for 60.4 percent and 16.6 percent of all guests respectively.
Hotels’ average room occupancy rate dropped 8.5 percentage points to 77.3 percent. A DSEC statement attributed the marked decrease to the “substantial” increase of 5,812 guestrooms from February last year.
The city’s 100 hotels and guesthouses provided 28,122 guestrooms at the end of February, a year-on-year growth of 26.1 percent. Guestrooms at 5-star hotel accounted for 66.5 percent of the total.
In the first two months, the number of hotel guests rose 13.2 percent year-on-year to 1.6 million.
Hotel guests accounted for 34.3 percent of all visitor arrivals in the first two months.
In the first two months, visitor arrivals totalled 4.68 million, up 2.1 percent year-on-year. Same-day visitors accounted for 52.4 percent of the total. Package-tour visitors made up 33.2 percent of all visitor arrivals.(macaunews)
