MGTO: Travelers tend to buy more and stay longer in town

Tourists visiting Macau have recently shown greater buying power and intend to stay longer in the city, according to Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, director of the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO).
Fernandes revealed that the average length of stay (LOS) of visitors in Macau has lately increased to 1.7 days, which, she speculated, has been driven by the stable Covid-19 situation in both Macau and China.
The new statistics represent a 0.3 days improvement on the 1.4 days in March, as shown in monthly data provided by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).
Alongside the encouraging increase in LOS, the MGTO also noticed stronger buying power from holidaymakers, which is a boon to the city’s tourism revenue.
“The consumption ability of the tourists in Macau has a tendency to grow since last year,” she said in an interview with TDM. According to the latest data, per-capita spending of visitors in Macau grew by 77.3% year-on-year to MOP3,129 in the fourth quarter of 2020. However, the aggregate travel expenditure (excluding gaming expenses) of all visitors dropped by 63.8% to MOP5.88 billion, chiefly a result of the 79.6% decline in the number of visitor arrivals (1,877,744) in the period surveyed.
Fernandes added that the majority of tourists to Macau are aged from 20-40, and are attracted to the city’s famous tourist spots, such as integrated resorts and Ruins of St. Paul’s.
Having seen that, she urged the tourism industry to invest in planning more interactive travel offerings to help boost the entire travel experience in Macau.
Local tourism operators should be more creative in devising more shopping opportunities throughout the tourist experience to entice tourists to spend more. The travel profits will eventually flow into the local economy and further accelerate recovery, she suggested.
According to president of Travel Industry Council of Macau, Paul Wong, the local travel trade is going to launch some niche, immersive tours and family-themed travel products to entice tourists to revisit Macau.
Wong suggests the tourism industry and the MGTO collaborate more closely to press ahead with the “Tourism +” approaches to advance the development of cultural, sport, and meetings, incentives, conferences & exhibitions (MICE) tourism.

Several five-star hotels fully booked on May Day Holiday

On the back of promising tourism statistics provided by Fernandes, the occupancy rate during the coming May Day Holiday has showed a sharp rise.
According to GGRAsia, several top-rated hotels in casino resorts are already fully booked for at least three nights during the five-day May Day Holiday.
They include Grand Lisboa, Wynn Palace, JW Marriott Hotel Macau, Sands Macao, the Sheraton Grand Macao, the Four Seasons Hotel Macao and The Parisian Macao.