Macau’s 4-star hotel rooms were the big winners in 2016, with receipts surging 51.2% to MOP$4.12 billion according to figures released this week by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC). Macau currently boasts 17 hotels classified as 4-star including Studio City, The Countdown at City of Dreams – formerly known as Hard Rock – and the Holiday Inn. Around MOP$2.09 billion of those receipts came directly from room sales.
Total receipts from the hotel sector grew 9.3% for the year to MOP$28.47 billion, with the number of hotels and guesthouses city-wide increasing by two to 109.
Receipts of 5-star hotels grew by 2.2% year-on-year to MOP$21.92 billion, with room sales comprising a major source of receipts at MOP$9.85 billion. Receipts of 3-star hotels increased 32.8% year-on-year to MOP$2.28 billion while that of 2-star hotels fell 14.2% to MOP$99.46 million.
The number of persons engaged in the sector grew by 9.6% to 49,628, including 27,204 engaged in the eight hotels boasting 1,500 workers or more.
However, expenditure of 5-star hotels increased by 6.1% year-on-year to MOP$20.30 billion, with compensation of employees totaling MOP$9.37 billion and operating expenses MOP$8.65 billion growing by 7.9% and 5.2% respectively. Expenditure of 4-star hotels grew 29.9% to MOP$3.82 billion, incurred mainly from operating expenses of MOP$2.07 billion.
Gross Value Added, which measures the sectoral contribution to the economy, rebounded from a decline in 2015 to enjoy a 7.6% year-on-year increase to MOP$14.21 billion. As new hotels started operation in the second half year of 2016, the growth in expenditure outpaced that in receipts, which drove down gross surplus of the sector by 17.3% year-on-year to MOP$2.28 billion. The rate of decrease was significantly smaller than that in 2015 where it fell by 44.4%.
