Tourism authority revamps website with new functionalities

The Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) has launched its newly-designed tourism promotion website, which supports 15 languages with new and enhanced functionalities.

According to a statement issued by the tourism authority, the new website, released on August 1, features responsive design, visually-oriented content, map integration and social media integration.

Using the tourism mascot Mak Mak as a design element, the new website conforms to “web content accessibility guidelines.”

MGTO aims to provide a one-stop shop for useful tourist information and tips, including sightseeing, shows and entertainment, shopping, restaurants, hotels, tourist information counters, walking tour routes, events and festivities.

MGTO stated that the new promotional website adjusts and adapts well to any device screen size, including desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones, and that users can easily discover tourist facilities in their vicinity and learn about the forecast visitor flows at major tourist attractions in Macau with the interactive maps. Localized information can also be obtained about the location.

The website also has links to various social media platforms in different languages, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube, operated by MGTO representatives.

Meanwhile, in keeping with SAR’s goal to develop Macau into a smart city and the action plans formulated in the Macao Tourism Industry Development Master Plan, MGTO listed its three goals for smart tourism.

One of the goals was to “optimize visitors’ travel experiences before, during and after trips through different initiatives of smart tourism application.”

The tourism bureau said that it would be adopting artificial intelligence and open data approaches to develop new intelligent trip planning applications, which aim to provide tailor-made trip planning services for users based on their travel interests.

In March, the bureau launched its smart tourism projects in collaboration with AliCloud of the Alibaba Group.

The bureau also pledged to work on the “smart visitor flow application,” which predicts the density of visitor flows to tourist attractions for a period of four hours, 24 hours and seven days. LV