Visitors wear face masks as they walk inside the Venetian casino hotel resort in Macao on Jan 22, 2020, after the former Portuguese colony reported its first case of COVID-19. (ANTHONY WALLACE / AFP)

MACAO - Macao's hospitality industry, a pillar industry of the special administrative region (SAR), has been striving to recover despite the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A report released Thursday by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) showed that the number of guests checking into Macao's hotels and guesthouses in December 2020 reached 579,000, an increase of 22.4 percent from the previous month.

Guests from the Chinese mainland decreased by 71.9 percent year-on-year to 2.76 million, but still accounting for about 71.2 percent of the total

The average occupancy rate of guest rooms in December last year was 53.1 percent, representing a month-on-month growth of 9.1 percentage points.

In November 2020, the average occupancy rate of guest rooms stood at 43.9 percent, up by 4.1 percentage points from October 2020, according to the DSEC. The October figure rose 22.9 percentage points from September last year.

However, for the whole year of 2020, the number of guests checking into Macao's hotels and guesthouses dropped 72.5 percent year-on-year to 3.874 million.

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The average occupancy rate of guest rooms for the year dropped by 62.2 percentage points from 2019 to 28.6 percent, said the DSEC report.

Guests from the Chinese mainland decreased by 71.9 percent year-on-year to 2.76 million, but still accounting for about 71.2 percent of the total, showed in the report.

A total of 120 hotels and guesthouses were open for business in December 2020, a decrease of three year-on-year. The number of available guest rooms dropped 8.2 percent to 35,000.

As of Thursday, no locally transmitted cases had been reported in Macao for about 10 months

As the COVID-19 situation basically stabilized in the mainland and Macao in mid-2020, Macao's tourism authority has been actively promoting the SAR as a safe and quality destination in accord with the reinstatement of travel permit issuance for mainland residents.

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As of Thursday, no locally transmitted cases had been reported in Macao for about 10 months. Last week, one new imported COVID-19 case was reported, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the SAR to 47.

In the second half of 2020, the number of visitor arrivals in Macao continued to rebound month-on-month, with that for August and September soaring 206.9 percent and 97.7 percent respectively, according to the DSEC figures.

On New Year's Eve, Macao registered the highest daily record of visitor arrivals over the past 11 months, the SAR's tourism authority said.

Visitor arrivals to Macao reached 30,747 on Dec. 31, 2020, while the average daily visitor arrivals exceeded 21,000 between Dec. 31, 2020 and Jan. 3, 2021, an increase of 13.1 percent over the average daily visitor arrivals in October 2020, according to the Macao Government Tourism Office.