Association calls for city transport to ‘match hotel quality’

The Macau Hotel Association (MHA) is arguing Macau needs to significantly improve its transport infrastructure, to match the quality of service provided by the city’s hotels.

The president of the Association, Luis Heredia, made the argument during an interview with the newspaper Tribuna de Macau.

Heredia’s call to government is not new.

In January this year, Rutger Verschuren, another member of MHA’s board, told the Times how the difficulty in accessing quality transport services across Macau was proving a major challenge to developing the city’s tourism sector.

This public transport crisis, led by the issues surrounding taxi laws, as well as the non-existence of any kind of ride-hailing system, like Uber, continues to worry the sector, especially now the government has indicated it is not planning to legalize such a system.

According to Heredia, complaints about taxi services top the list of visitors’ frustrations.

The taxi debacle must be addressed, he insisted, so the city’s hotel guests are “fully satisfied” during their stay.

Heredia was questioned on the fact that, in 2023, the number of complaints related to services in the tourism sector reached a record.

He said it was only normal some tourists leave Macau feeling dissatisfied by their experience of the city, particularly those visitors who bring their families with them.

But the MHA president also said insufficient access to easy and convenient transport infrastructure, as well as the density of pedestrians in Macau’s narrow streets, accounts considerably for this “lacking satisfaction.”

Heredia said these difficulties relate more broadly to “Macau’s characteristics” and are, therefore, “not easy to manage.”

Another aspect of concern for MHA is the hiring of manpower, added Heredia, who claimed there have been no noticeable improvements to this system.

Presently, the system is, in Heredia’s words, “complex and time-consuming” and was this way “even before the pandemic.”

To this end, he spoke of the importance of training, as well as the educational efforts made by local institutions, namely universities – but even these things, Heredia said, are insufficient if Macau wishes to suppress all its manpower shortages.

Ultimately, Heredia emphasized the need for everyone to understand all the issues that surround the tourism sector.

These are not just related to hotel stays; they concern all the factors that interlink with these stays and the city’s tourism more broadly.

Heredia said not much more could be done by hotels to improve the experience of their guests when those guests encounter difficulties commuting through Macau during their stay, irrespective of whether they are arriving, leaving, or even finding a way to reach their favorite hotspots or restaurants in town.