Macau’s hotel occupancy rate just 13.3% in August, mostly locals

The occupancy rate of Macau’s hotels stood at just 13.3% in August, with 184,000 guests checking in throughout the month – down 85.5% year-on-year.

According to information released by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) on Tuesday, the majority of those guests were local Macau residents following a series of promotional offers by the city’s concessionaires. Of the 184,000 people to stay in hotels in August, 124,000 or 67.4% were locals, representing a 137% increase over the same month in 2019. The number of available guest rooms fell 9.7% year-on-year to 35,000.

Only 44,000 guests were from mainland China and 11,000 from Hong Kong, both down more than 90% year-on-year. The average length of stay of hotel guests was 1.4 nights.

The DSEC said that average occupancy over the first eight months of 2020 was down by 68.1 percentage points year-on-year to 23.5%, with the number of guests of hotels and guesthouses falling by 77.0% to 2,167,000.

Occupancy rates in lower quality guesthouses fell from 23.8% in July to just 13.1% in August due to a decrease in lodging demand by non-resident workers following recent adjustments to quarantine measures.