CNY | Travel agencies see decline in group tours

The number of tourists traveling in tour groups is expected to slow throughout the ongoing Spring Festival holiday, according to travel agents interviewed by the Times.
The latest information released by the Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) indicates that the number of tourists dropped by 2.6 percent in 2015 (totaling 30.7 million). Of those, a total of 8.52 million tourists came to visit in tour groups, a year-on-year decline of 8 percent.
The drop in visitor arrivals on package tours is having repercussions for local travel agencies, although the agencies focused on daily excursions from mainland China to Macau showed little concern about the New Year traffic.
“The number of groups will, for sure, shrink during the Spring Festival, especially right after the New Year,” Miss Chan, from Macao Vacation Travel Services, told the Times, adding that “2015 was not a good year as a whole though.”
Recent reports from Hong Kong media indicate that some Hong Kong tourism associations estimated a 70 percent drop in tourist group numbers during the big holiday. Correspondingly, Miss Chan said that “people prefer to go to the southeast regions because they are very cheap now. Hong Kong is not doing well in travel services, which is definitely affecting Macau.”
Nonetheless, companies from Guangzhou stated that they will still prompt tourist groups to visit Hong Kong and Macau. Mainland media acknowledged that one of the biggest travel agencies in Guangzhou claimed that 70 percent of its Hong Kong and Macau lines are full.
According to Macau’s Statistics and Census Service, there were 237 travel agencies in Macau in 2014.  Staff reporter