Business remains sluggish at Macao’s 120 hotels and inns, which hosted just 440,000 guests last month, a year-on-year decline of 16.4 per cent.
The Statistics and Census Bureau said the number of mainland Chinese guests (333,000) dropped by 20.3 per cent while local staycationers (80,000) rose 1.2 per cent. Guests’ average length of stay fell by 0.1 nights to 1.7 nights.
In the first three quarters, the average occupancy rate decreased by 12.9 percentage points year-on-year to 37.5 per cent. Guest numbers dipped 25.5 per cent to 3,754,000, although their average length of stay rose by 0.1 night to 1.9 nights.
The number of available guest rooms last month rose by 4.8 per cent year-on-year to 37,000.
Hotels designated for Covid-19 medical observation quarantine were excluded from the data. The average occupancy rate of guest rooms last month dropped by 11.9 percentage points year-on-year to 37.6 per cent.
The bureau pointed out that the number of visitor arrivals grew by 68.3 per cent month-on-month to 557,842 in September. However, it dropped by 11.3 per cent year-on-year. Mainland Chinese accounted for 90.1 per cent of all visitor arrivals.
In the first three quarters, visitor arrivals increased by 24.2 per cent year-on-year to 4.36 million. Same-day visitors (2,619,343) and overnight visitors (1,744,762) fell by 8.2 per cent and 39.9 per cent respectively, The Macau Post Daily reported.
