A total of 447,000 guests checked into Macau’s 120 hotels and guesthouses in January, a year-on-year decline of 58.6 percent, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) announced this week.

The number of guests from the mainland fell by 52.5 percent year-on-year to 373,000 (83.5 percent of the total), while the number of local “staycation” guests rose by 0.7 percent to 49,000. Guests’ average length of stay increased by 0.2 night year-on-year to 1.7 nights.

The number of hotels and guesthouses decreased by two year-on-year.

The number of available guestrooms went down by 6.1 percent to 36,000.

Hotels and guesthouses designated by the government for quarantine and medical observation purposes were excluded from last month’s data.

Guestrooms’ average occupancy rate stood at 40.3 percent, representing a month-to-month fall of 12.8 percentage points and a year-on-year drop of 40.7 percentage points.

There were no inbound package tour visitors in January, while the number of visitors joining local tours was 1,100. Outbound residents using services of travel agencies totalled 7,900, some 7,600 (96.2 percent) of whom visited the mainland.

This photo taken last month from Big Taipa Hill shows several casino-hotel resorts in Cotai. Photo: Tony Wong