October saw a 19.3 percent increase in international hotel guests, when compared with a year earlier, with some 97,000 foreign passport holders spending the night in Macao’s hotels. That’s according to new figures from the Statistics and Census Service (known by its Portuguese initials DSEC), which showed that foreigners made up 8.2 percent of the total 1,176,000 guests – about the same proportion as pre-pandemic October 2019.
South Koreans were the biggest group DSEC noted, at 30,000, representing a 51.2 percent year-on-year jump. The 7,000 Malaysians staying in the city grew by 25 percent, while the 6,000 Indian guests surged by 42.6 percent. Roughly 4,000 US citizens checked into the SAR’s hotels, up 3.5 percent compared with October 2023.
Meanwhile, Macao’s 146 hotels saw an average occupancy of 87.3 percent in October, slightly above the average rate across the first three quarters of 2024 and a year-on-year rise of 4.5 percent.
[See more: Tourism in Macao: Looking beyond a topline number]
Five-star hotels fared the best at 89.7 percent, followed by three-star properties at 85.1 percent, then four-star properties at 82.6 percent (two-star hotels are not tracked). Three-star hotels experienced the most year-on-year growth, hitting 7.2 percent.
While the number of hotels in the city increased by nine properties compared with a year ago, the total number of available guest rooms dropped by 3.6 percent, to 44,000. The closing of the Sheraton Grand Macao – until recently the biggest hotel in Macao – knocked around 4,000 rooms off the books, though the property is scheduled to reopen as the Londoner Grand in January (albeit with fewer rooms).
Across the first 10 months of the year the SAR’s average hotel occupancy rate climbed by 4.8 percent year-on-year, to 85.6 percent. The total number of guests grew by 9.3 percent year-on-year, to 12,068,000, and their average length of stay remained steady at 1.7 nights.
