More than 6,200 hotel rooms were being built at the end of June but most will be scaled for high-end accommodation in the Cotai strip, according to information released by the Land, Public Works and Transport Bureau.
By the end of the second quarter, there were 11 hotel projects being built, most of them in the Macau peninsula. Though only three projects are getting off the ground or being expanded on Cotai, they account for more than 85 percent of the hotel room supply under construction, or more than 5,600 rooms.
The bureau did not identify the projects, but the new supply very likely comes from the phase two of Galaxy Macau and the Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd’s Studio City resort.
With a further 16.700 hotel rooms provided by 27 projects that the bureau is still reviewing, Macau can anticipate over 23,000 hotel rooms in the pipeline. Among the projects being reviewed, 12,600 rooms are planned for Cotai.
Most of the new hotels, 17, are planned for the peninsula, while five are to be built in Cotai. There are also plans to build three hotels in Taipa and two in Coloane.
But it is yet not known how many rooms will be for budget hotels as the classification of each hotel will only be carried out by the Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) once the construction is completed.
Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, the MGTO director, said last week they were still reviewing five applications for budget hotels – the same figure she had mentioned in February.
There were 1,470 budget hotel rooms by the end of June, accounting for 5 percent of the 28,000 available rooms now.(macaunews)
