In Macau, a recent survey has reportedly discovered that a large proportion of the city’s five-star hotels had sold out all of their rooms for the Chinese New Year period a full eleven days before the start of the celebrations.

According to a Thursday report from GGRAsia, Chinese New Year festivities are due to begin on February 15 before ending on February 21 with the seven-day period expected to see Macau welcome at least 930,000 tourists.

However, these visitors could struggle to find somewhere to stay as a survey of 22 five-star hotels conducted by GGRAsia on Monday reportedly found that a full ten had no unfilled rooms for the seven-day Chinese New Year period while a further seven offered only limited availability. The filled venues purportedly included the Altira Macau from Melco Resorts and Entertainment Limited and MGM China Holdings Limited’s MGM Macau while those with some space remaining encompassed Galaxy Entertainment Group Limited’s Galaxy Macau as well as The Venetian Macao from the Sands China Limited subsidiary of Las Vegas Sands Corporation.

GGRAsia reported that its Monday survey additionally found that some four-star hotels still had limited availability for the Chinese New Year period including the Studio City Macau and Holiday Inn Macau Cotai Central. It cited research from brokerage firm Morgan Stanley Asia Limited as indicating that occupancy rates for this year are likely to be higher than they were for 2017 when the average hit 95.5%.

Macau reportedly offered some 37,100 rooms via 111 hotels and guesthouses as of the end of December, which represented a rise of 2.3% year-on-year. GGRAsia cited Maria Helena De Senna Fernandes from the Government Tourism Office as stating that she expects the former Portuguese enclave to welcome 2% to 3% more tourists for this year’s Chinese New Year celebrations than it did for the same period in 2017.

In terms of how much these rooms are set to cost per day, GGRAsia quoted Andy Wu Keng Kuong from the Macau Travel Industry Council as declaring that the five-star rate in Macau is likely to be ‘at least 10%’ higher than the $257.80 average seen for 2017’s Chinese New Year period.

“This year we have seen high advance bookings for Cotai hotels in particular,” Wu reportedly told GGRAsia. “The average occupancy of the hotels is likely to be very similar to the Chinese New Year period last year, if not higher, even though the city now has higher room inventory.”