we explore the pressure points faced by the city’s hotel operators (GERAL)
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With more than 40 million visitor arrivals in 2025, 45,000 seems a decidedly low number for Macau hotel rooms, compared to the 150,000 rooms plus for the 38.5 million visitors to Las Vegas during that same year. With the average length of stay of Macau’s visitors falling from 1.5 days in 2022 to 1.1 days in 2025, we explore the pressure points faced by the city’s hotel operators.
Macau has roughly 45,000 hotel rooms and at peak periods hits around 99% occupancy. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. As the city’s integrated resorts develop new supply or revamp existing hotel room inventory into larger, luxury accommodation – with many keys comped to players – analysts continue to lament insufficient supply, a result of Macau’s lack of available land.
As of the end of 2025, the city had 39 five-star hotels, 19 four-star hotels, 20 three-star hotels, 25 two-star hotels and 44 “low-cost accommodation” venues. To break that down further, five-star hotel properties offer a total of 26,195 hotel rooms, four-star hotels just 9,067, three-star hotels 6,706 and two-star hotels 1,977. Low-cost accommodation rooms total just 1,205.
Veteran hotelier Rutger Verschuren, Vice President of Artyzen Hospitality Group for Macau & Hengqin and the Vice Chairman of the Macau Hotel Association, notes that key holidays and events pack out hotel rooms, and “it can be very difficult to find a room on those dates. But we cannot simply build hotels to satisfy a few peak weekends per year.”
This is partially due to the liberalized visa policy with China, which has caused a massive influx of tourists. Macau welcomed 20.94 million visitors in the first half of this year, with only 1.42 million of them classified as “international.”
Those regional visitors are not inclined to stay long. Same-day-return visitor numbers for the six-month period increased by 15.3% year-on-year, while overnight visitor numbers rose by just 0.2% in the same period. Verschuren points out what many government reps and integrated resort operators have been preaching: “Rather than only asking whether we have enough rooms, I think we should ask how we convince more people to stay longer.”
But why should they? Macau can honestly be seen in a day. The Ruins of St. Paul, a casino or two on the peninsula, the Cotai Strip and you’re done.
And the average visitor to Macau is getting younger, is more cautious with their spending, is less inclined to gamble and is interested in events, sightseeing and pictures for their social media.
But that hasn’t stopped Macau’s hotels from filling up.
More keys
According to the Macao Government Tourism Office’s oldest records, Macau had some 17,533 hotel rooms in 2008, of which 9,762 were five-star hotel rooms, 4,009 were four-star, 2,378 were three-star, 822 were two-star and 562 were “low-cost accommodation”. And that’s after the big casinos came to town.
Times were different. Jocelyn Wong, Chairman of the Macau Hotel Association and Executive Director & Deputy General Manager of Hotel Royal, notes that before the arrival of the integrated resorts, the hotel operations at that time fell into two categories: “casino-supporting hotels” and “traditional city hotels and budget accommodation.”
This shifted massively with the arrival of integrated resorts. And once they arrived, that was the model the government was looking for, as evidenced by the elimination of the satellite casinos at the end of 2025.
This caused a massive shift, as hotel operators who were banking on erstwhile satellite casinos – such as Emperor, Kam Pek and Ponte 16 – needed to find a new way to fill the revenue vacuum. And they’re still trying to find the right mix.
The MHA Chairman notes that, “The future supply optimization should be structural and differentiated. The high-end market can continue to elevate personalized services, MICE offerings and exclusive non-gaming entertainment aligned with the ‘City of Performing Arts’ vision, while the mid-range and budget markets should move away from generic pricing wars. They need to pivot toward lifestyle branding, digital integration, local culinary heritage (City of Gastronomy) and neighborhood cultural experiences to capture younger demographics and FITs (Free Independent Travelers).”
But what about pricing?
For Andy Wu, President of the Macau Travel Industry Council, “Overall, the prices of Macau hotels are reasonable. Most Macau hotels are large-scale and have comprehensive facilities. Compared with neighboring regions, Macau remains attractive in terms of product quality and service, and the market can also correspond to this level of pricing.”
Wong reiterates the sentiment, noting, “Macau hotel room rates remain fundamentally reasonable, displaying dynamic, market-driven pricing across different star ratings and geographic zones.”
For Veschuren, the pricing model is more complex. The hospitality expert opines that “in general they are probably too cheap considering the level of occupancy and the cost base. From a simple supply-and-demand perspective, when occupancies are as high as they are, rates should probably be somewhat higher.”
Verschuren points to the increase in operating, supply and labor expenses, which have increased significantly without an accompanying average room rate increase, noting that, “To safeguard the quality of the hotel product and service, hotels need to be able to achieve healthier rates.”
And the playing field is not even, as non-gaming hotels “compete with casino hotels on pricing, but we do not have a casino subsidizing the wider operation.”
Non-gaming hotels also traditionally work with travel agents for pre-bookings, sometimes booking up to 100 rooms per day for a month. But this creates its own problems.
“On the strong dates, the travel agent may make a very good profit by reselling those rooms,” notes Verschuren. “But on slow Monday or Tuesday nights, or if there is a typhoon, rainstorm or sudden drop in demand, the agent still has to pay for the rooms it committed to. So, the agent may then go onto the online travel agencies and dump those rooms at incredibly low prices simply to reduce its loss.
“That can be very disruptive for the hotel, because you suddenly see your own hotel room online at perhaps half the rate you are selling directly, sometimes even below the rate at which you sold the room to the travel agent.”
Manpower
“Non-IR hotels do face significant pressure in competing for manpower,” adds Wong. “Large integrated resorts, with their strong brand recognition, salary and benefits packages, find it relatively easier to attract local employees. Non-IR properties must lean into flexible employment models, digital management and local talent development programs, while leaning on cross-border labor policies to maintain baseline operations.”
Verschuren says that “the challenge is not only the number of workers; it is also the rules and the way the quota system operates. The process can take too long, and the quota mechanism does not always reflect the difference between an integrated resort and a normal hotel. Integrated resorts employ very large numbers of local casino dealers, whereas non-gaming hotels do not have that category of local employment to balance the quota.”
The executive further explains that “many local employees understandably prefer non-shift or more clerical roles — HR, marketing, sales, finance, purchasing and administration. It is much harder to find young local people who want to work in stewarding, housekeeping, restaurant service or other manual and shift-based roles.”
Verschuren also notes that many of these administrative roles will likely be passed on to AI and AI agents, and fewer people will be needed to fill those positions. But the manpower supply is unlikely to change, therefore, the quota problem will continue to exist for the more labor-intensive positions.
Macau’s integrated resort hotel supply is going to continue veering towards the high-end market, with Galaxy Phase 4, Wynn’s new luxury 432-room hotel The Enclave at Wynn Palace, City of Dreams’ REM hotel with 150 high-end suites, and other remodeling projects aimed at boosting the high-end appeal of Macau to those not only wanting to stay for more than a day, but willing to spend while here.
But Wong opines that the three-star and four-star properties will continue to “anchor cultural immersion and urban vitality,” as updated hotel legislation means “mid-tier properties will experience steady, qualitative growth.”
She highlights that such properties “play a vital role in hosting family travelers, cultural tourists, backpackers and budget-conscious MICE attendees seeking diverse price points.”
https://asgam.com/2026/08/26/check-in-check-out/
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