An employee speaks on the phone at the reception desk of the Sands Macau hotel, operated by Sands China Ltd., a unit of Las Vegas Sands Corp., in Macau, China, on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015. Sands China is scheduled to release fourth-quarter earnings Jan. 28. Photographer: Jerome Favre/Bloomberg

(Almost) No vacancy

The average hotel occupancy rate in the city in September hit 86.6 per cent, up 5.6 percentage points year-on-year, according to the latest data released by the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO).
When compared to the 92.6 per cent occupancy rate seen in August however, the rate for September dropped by six percentage points.
Last month, 5-star hotels in the city recorded the highest growth in occupancy throughout the month, with an increase of 6.5 percentage points year-on-year to 86 per cent, compared to 79.5 per cent seen one year ago.
However, local 3-star hotels registered the highest occupancy rate overall, at 89.6 per cent, posting a year-on-year increase of 5.2 percentage points.
For local 4-star hotels, meanwhile, the average occupancy rate increased by 3.8 percentage points to 86.6 during the month of September.

Further drop in prices
In the month of September, the increased supply of hotel rooms corresponded with a further year-on-year decrease in hotel room rates.
The MGTO data shows that hotel room prices were MOP1,212.5 (US$151.72) per night on average in September, down 11.3 per cent compared to the same period in 2015 (MOP1,367.6).
The average price for local 3-star hotels recorded its largest year-on-year decrease of 19.4 per cent, down to MOP754.5 per night in the month of September.
The average price for staying in a 4-star hotel per night was MOP714.7, down 14.2 per cent compared to MOP832.8 in the same month last year, while 5-star hotels offered an average price of MOP1,543.4 per night, a decrease of 10.4 per cent year-on-year compared to MOP1,723.3 recorded in September 2015.
There are 41, 3-star to 5-star hotels in the city, according to the MGTO data provided by the Macau Hotel Association.
For the first nine months of this year, the city’s average hotel occupancy rate rose slightly, by 0.7 percentage points year-on-year, to 83.6 per cent.
Both 4-star and 3-star hotels in the city each posted increases of 2.2 percentage points in the accumulative occupancy rate, while local 5-star hotels saw a slight increase of 0.1 percentage points year-on-year.
Meanwhile, from January to September, the average hotel room rate was MOP1,293.8 per night, a decrease of 13.7 per cent year-on-year compared to the same period in 2015 (MOP1,500).
For the same period, the room price offered by 3-star hotels dropped by 17.5 per cent year-on-year, down to MOP848.5 per night on average, while that of 4-star and 5-star hotels decreased by 16.3 per cent and 12.3 per cent year-on-year to MOP766 and MOP1,644.4 per night, respectively.