Hotel guests fall 85 pct in February

The number of guests from the Chinese mainland (106,000) and Hong Kong (21,000) fell 86.3 percent and 81.0 percent respectively. 

Guests’ average length of stay rose by 0.3 night year-on-year to 1.8 nights. 

The number of available guestrooms dropped 3.8 percent year-on-year to 37,000. 

The bureau pointed out that due to the “substantial decline” in the number of visitor arrivals amidst the ongoing novel coronavirus epidemic, guestrooms’ average occupancy rate dropped 76.9 percentage points year-on-year to 15.0 percent in February. Five-star hotels’ average occupancy rate declined 84.0 percentage points to just 10.0 percent, while the decrease in the average guestroom occupancy rates of 2-star hotels (36.9 percent) and guesthouse (43.3 percent) was relatively small, with respective declines of 33.8 percentage points and 22.4 percentage points, as some of their guestrooms were provided by employers to their non-resident workers for temporary accommodation during the city’s current entry and exit restrictions in response to the COVID-19 crisis. 

In the first two months of the year, the average occupancy rate of guestrooms stood at 50.3 percent, representing a drop of 42.1 percentage points year-on-year. The number of guests of hotels and guesthouses dropped 46.4 percent to 1.23 million in the two months. 

Macau’s tourism and hospitality sectors have been hit hard by the novel coronavirus epidemic since late January.