No time-frame given to new projects

Following recent announcements from the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, Alexis Tam, the MGTO director, Helena de Senna Fernandes, has said that developments would be made this year in projects such as the setting up of a “café and creative activities at the Nam Van Lake and Taipa Houses Museum” areas. “There are many features that we want to include in those places,” Senna Fernandes said, though no clear time-frame was given. “We plan to implement at least something [with respect to those projects] this year.”
Other new projects in preparation include expanding the Macau Grand Prix Museum and revitalizing the Coloane stilt houses. A feasibility study on the possibility of launching leisure cruise tours between the Macau Peninsula and Taipa/Coloane will also be undertaken. New walking tour routes and “more attractive touristic packages” are being arranged as well.
Events like the “Parade Through Macau, Latin City” and the “Macau Light Festival” will be maintained, the director said. Overall, the plan is to promote more touristic offers, in order to attract more visitors and to foster diversification of the region’s source markets.
Outdoors, the MGTO will hold many promotional events, ranging from a food festival in Japan to a “major event” in Korea (Seoul and Busan). A promotional video will be launched under the new slogan “Experience Macau Your Own Style.”
To finance these projects, the MGTO will spend over one billion patacas coming from the Tourism Fund, an increase of 4 percent when compared to the spending from 2015. That amount doesn’t include the bureau’s operational expenses. The bureau’s head said that all the projects will be evaluated in order to avoid unnecessary spending. “It’s not only about organizing events; we must see that the events are reaching the goals that we set.”
During yesterday’s event, Senna Fernandes listed four major goals for tourism policy this year: “promote smart tourism by maximizing use of the Internet and social platforms for tourism promotion”; “deepen the planning of tourism development”; “develop electronic administration and enhance tourism service quality”; and finally “strengthen regional cooperation, actively participating in international organizations.” PB