Occupied!

The city’s hotel occupancy rate saw a 6.6 per cent increase year-on-year to reach 91.6 per cent, and also a slight increase of 3.5 per cent month-on-month, the latest data from the Macao Government Tourist Office (MGTO) shows.
In particular, local 3-star hotels recorded the highest occupancy rate at 96.5 per cent, posting an increase of 6.3 percentage points compared to 90.2 per cent registered in the same month last year.
However, 5-star hotels saw the greatest annual growth, up 7.4 percentage points to 90.1 per cent, compared to 82.7 per cent in November last year.
For 4-star hotels, the occupancy rate was 93 per cent, posting an increase of 5.2 percentage points year-on-year.

Decreased hotel room prices
The average hotel room price in November saw a decrease of 9.8 per cent year-on-year to MOP1,203 (US$150) per night, compared to MOP1,333 recorded for the same month last year. On a monthly comparison, hotel room prices decreased by 9.9 per cent.
The average cost of staying one night in a local 3-star hotel was cut by 18.2 per cent year-on-year to MOP788, compared to MOP963 in November 2015.
Meanwhile, the room prices for 5-star and 4-star hotels declined by 9.5 per cent and 9.2 per cent to MOP1,487 and MOP782 respectively, compared to MOP1,644 and MOP861 in the same period last year.
The MGTO data, also based on information provided by the Macau Hotel Association, includes 42 hotels in the city in the 3-star to 5-star range.
For the first eleven months of the year, the average hotel occupancy rate was 84.7 per cent, a slight increase of 1.6 percentage points compared to 83.1 per cent registered a year ago.
Five-star hotels, meanwhile, saw occupancy rates between January and November increase by 1.3 percentage points year-on-year to 83.5 per cent.
Increases in the cumulative occupancy rate also appeared in both 4-star and 3-star hotels, up 2.3 percentage points and 2.8 percentage points year-on-year, to 85.6 per cent and 89.8 per cent, respectively.
On the other hand, the general price of local hotel rooms dropped 13.1 per cent year-on-year for the first eleven months of 2016.
In particular, the average room price for the city’s 3-star hotels saw the greatest decrease between January and November, down 17.7 per cent to MOP843, while 5-star and 4-star hotel rooms registered decreases of 11.8 per cent and 15.4 per cent year-on-year, respectively.

Occupancy rate the same, number of rooms up during Christmas
Andy Wu Keng Kuong, the president of the Macau Travel Industry Council, revealed to Business Daily that the hotel occupancy rate will stay at around 80 per cent during this year’s Christmas Holidays, which is more or less the same as the rate recorded a year ago.
However, he pointed out the increase in the number of hotel rooms, due to the openings of the Parisian Macao and Wynn Palace in Cotai earlier this year.
As such, with more rooms provided in the city and occupancy rates remaining unchanged when compared to last year, in general the hotel occupancy rate will see a growth for this year’s festive holiday in December, said Mr. Wu.
The president also remarked that the average price for hotel rooms in the city during the holiday period would increase slightly compared to the price charged on normal weekends, adding that the price change will not be large.
Following the opening of the new hotels in the city, many discounts and offers have already been marketed in the past months to attract tourists to stay overnight, thus, Mr. Wu predicts the city’s hotels will not provide further offers during the holidays.
Meanwhile, since the Christmas holiday is not a mandatory holiday in Mainland China, Mr. Wu notes that tourists visiting the city during December will mostly originate from the neighbouring Special Administrative Region, adding that the number of Chinese tourists to the city will be similar to the numbers during normal weekends, with the total number of tourists remaining unchanged compared to last Christmas.