GGRAsia – Macau 5-star casino hotels see strong CNY bookings

Macau 5-star casino hotels see strong CNY bookings

Jan 29, 2019 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

More than half Macau’s 23 five-star casino hotels are already fully booked for at least four days out of the upcoming, week-long, Chinese New Year holiday period; with occupancy in most cases peaking from February 7.

That is according to information GGRAsia collated from the official booking websites of those casino hotels. China’s State Council has designated the 2019 Chinese New Year festive period as running from Monday, February 4 (Chinese New Year’s Eve) until Sunday February 10 inclusive.

As of Monday this week, a total of 19 Macau casino hotels – most of them located in Cotai – had full bookings for at least four days out of the coming Chinese New Year holiday: 11 of the 19 were fully booked for more than four days of the festive period.

They were: Wynn Macau and Wynn Palace, promoted by Wynn Macau Ltd; Nüwa at City of Dreams, Macau, promoted by Melco Resorts and Entertainment Ltd; Banyan Tree Macau, The Ritz-Carlton, Macau, and JW Marriott Hotel Macau, all at Galaxy Macau casino resort, promoted by Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd; as well as the Venetian Macao, Conrad Macao, Cotai Central, the Sheraton Grand Macao Hotel and Four Seasons Hotel Macao, all promoted by Sands China Ltd. Galaxy Entertainment’s StarWorld Hotel, in downtown Macau, was also among that cohort.

Several other five-star casino hotels in the city had bookings blocking off four days of the Chinese New Year period. They were: Grand Lisboa and Hotel Lisboa, both located on Macau peninsula and promoted by SJM Holdings Ltd; MGM Macau and MGM Cotai, promoted by MGM China Holdings Ltd; Altira Macau in Taipa, promoted by Melco Resorts; Galaxy Hotel and Hotel Okura Macau, promoted by Galaxy Entertainment; and the St Regis Macao, promoted by Sands China.

As of Monday, out of a total of 27 five-star and four-star casino hotel properties surveyed by GGRAsia, remaining room availability mostly applied to the first two or three days of the Chinese New Year holiday, or the final day of the holiday. The minimum nightly rate offered among those five-star properties with vacancies on the first day of the Chinese New Year period was nonetheless above HKD2,600 (US$331), according to booking information on the hotels’ respective official websites.

Macau had a total of 38,800 operating guest rooms as of November, according to the latest-available figures from Statistics and Census Service.

The Chinese New Year break is typically a busy period for Macau’s casinos, as thousands of mainland Chinese visitors flock to the city to test their luck for the coming 12 months.

The average hotel occupancy rate for last year’s Chinese New Year holiday was 94.5 percent across Macau hotels and guesthouses, according to Macao Government Tourism Office data (MGTO). For five-star hotels, it was 95.9 percent. The MGTO data also showed the average room rate of the city’s five-star hotels at the time was MOP2,195.2, while that of the four-star properties stood at MOP1,636.8.

MGTO director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes recently forecast Macau might see an “8 percent to 10 percent” year-on-year increase in visitor arrivals for the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday period. The tourism official referred to the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge as a factor in the likely year-on-year expansion of visitor numbers for the holiday period.