Hotel stays down by 58 per cent
Staycations provide little aid to Macao’s 120 embattled hotels and guesthouses, as mainland visitors stay away and inbound tours grind to a halt in January.
Macao’s hotels have been confronted with another month of dismal results after hosting just 447,000 guests in January.
The Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) announced that the figures represent a year-on-year decline of 58.5 per cent.
The number of guests from the mainland fell by 52.5 per cent to 373,000 (83.5 per cent of the total), while the number of staycation guests rose by a mere 0.7 per cent to 49,000. Guests’ average length of stay increased by 0.2 nights to 1.7 nights.
The number of hotels and guesthouses decreased by two to 120, while the number of available guestrooms dropped by 6.1 per cent to 36,000.
Hotels and guesthouses designated by the government for quarantine and medical observation purposes were excluded from last month’s data.
Guestrooms’ average occupancy rate stood at 40.3 per cent, representing a month-to-month fall of 12.8 percentage points and a year-on-year drop of 40.7 percentage points, The Macau Post Daily reported.
There were no inbound package tours in January, while only 1,100 visitors joined local tours. Some 7,900 residents used travel agencies, 7,600 (96.2 per cent) of whom visited the mainland.
