Macau hotel occupancy plunged 55.6% in July

Occupancy rates collapsed amid the last Covid-19 outbreak.

Macau.- The Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) has revealed what was already a given – that Macau hotel occupancy plunged amid the Covid-19 outbreak last month. Hotel occupancy fell 55.6 per cent year-on-year to 309,000.

Occupancy comprised 238,000 mainland Chinese tourists and 51,000 domestic tourists, down 57.1 per cent and 52.1 per cent respectively. The average length of stay increased by 0.4 nights to 2.1.

In the first seven months of 2022, the number of local tourists dropped by 44.6 per cent year-on-year to 18,000. The number of Macau residents booking outbound services such as transportation, accommodation and sightseeing through travel agencies dropped by 95.9 per cent to 900.

A total of 115 hotels offered accommodation services to the public in July 2022; the number of available rooms decreased by 10.9 per cent year-over-year.

The DSEC has previously reported that 9,759 tourists arrived in Macau in July. The figure was down 97.4 per cent month-on-month and 98.8 per cent year-on-year.

The numbers were severely impacted by the latest outbreak of Covid-19 cases in Macau, which started on June 19 and took more than a month for the authorities to bring under control.

In July, Macau’s gross gaming revenue was down 83.9 per cent month-on-month from MOP2.48bn to MOP398m (US$49.2m). The figure was down 95.3 per cent when compared to July 2021 and was the lowest since 2003, when city authorities began publishing monthly figures. Macau’s GGR for the first seven months of 2022 combined stands at MOP26.6bn (US$3.29bn), down 53.6 per cent year-on-year.