Macau hotel occupancy at highest since January 2020

The average hotel occupancy rate in Macau reached 53.1 per cent in December.

Macau.- Macau’s hotel occupancy reached its highest level since January 2020 in December.

The average occupancy rate in Decembr was 53.1 per cent, 9.1 per cent above the previous month.

It’s the highest rate since January 2020, before the full impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and related travel restrictions, but remains down by 38.9 per cent year-on-year.

Guests booked 21,700 rooms in five-star hotels, 11.7 per cent fewer than the same month in 2019. The figure does not include hotels being used for mandatory quarantine purposes.

The average hotel occupancy rate in Macau in 2020 reached 28.6 per cent, down 62 percentage points against 2019.

Hotels and guest houses received 3,874,000 guests, down 72.5 per cent year-on-year.

Even though only 47 cases of Covid-19 have been detected in Macau, and deaths have been reported, the SAR has been severely hit by the closure of borders.

Activity has picked up since September 23, when visitors from all the mainland were allowed to resume travel to Macau under individual and group visas.

However, results are still disappointing for the industry, which fears visitor numbers for the Chinese New Year holidays will be lower than those seen at Christmas.