The Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) for mainland tourists intending to travel to Macau may be resumed after the upcoming 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) this month, which was delayed from early March.
The two-weeks of annual meetings, to begin on May 22, are largely ceremonial, with the legislature rubber-stamping decisions previously reached by Communist Party leaders.
Earlier, the Chief Executive said that the local government would request that the central government resume the issuance of the IVS and increase the number of cities covered by the scheme.
The scheme allows mainland residents to visit Macau as independent travelers. It is the primary type of visa for mainland gamblers seeking to enter Macau.
Although its resumption will depend on whether the Covid-19 situation has completely stabilized across the country, it is likely that Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng’s request for resumption will be approved, according to commentators.
Political commentator Larry So is confident that the central government will grant Ho’s request as the city provides a safe environment for tourists.
Yesterday, the Times reported that some analysts suspect the number of mainland visitors to Hong Kong will not return to 2018 levels quickly, because of underlying tensions with the mainland that make the city appear less safe for Chinese tourists. However, Macau has not had any protests akin to those in Hong Kong last year.
“I’m quite sure that the central government will allow the reissuance of this visa. […] We will have the IVS visitors coming in somewhere around the time the NPC meeting [ends],” So predicted in comments to the Times.
Another opinion, from Leonardo Dioko, director of the Macao Institute for Tourism Studies’ Tourism Research Center, suggests this might not be the proper moment to reinstate the scheme as the city is still “struggling to find the safest and most secure way to relax border crossing barriers with our immediate neighbors, as a first step.”
The IVS is considered to have been instrumental in aiding Macau’s recovery from SARS 17 years ago. The IVS system was first implemented in four cities of the mainland’s Guangdong province in 2003.
“The novel coronavirus has completely upended what we regarded before as normal – we now do not know what the new normal will be like,” said the scholar.
While the public is keen to undertake so-called “revenge travel” to make up for the lockdowns of the past few months, public health and safety in destinations will still be the main consideration in steering policy, Dioko explained.
“Countries will likely be promoting domestic tourism more, followed by regional or cross-border tourism, before a return to international travel patterns,” he explained.
Despite the possibility of resuming the IVS later this month, tourist spending will not be as high as normal as mainland tourists are also recovering from the economic effects of Covid-19.
According to So, the re-issuance of the IVS will not be an assurance that the spending power will be as high, at least in the remaining quarters of the year.
“We will not have the money that we did have in recent years because we know that the economic [situation] now in China is not so good. People do not have that kind of spare money to come and gamble,” said So.
In late January, the central government halted the issuance of IVS visas as part of its measures to contain the pandemic outbreak.
However, the individual visas already issued by mainland authorities remained valid despite the issuance halt.
These are the visas that mainland tourists have used to enter Macau during the past few months, as tour groups from mainland China to the SAR are still suspended.
Last year, the total number of Chinese IVS visitors totaled nearly 13.1 million, the largest number of IVS visitors in a year. In 2017 and 2018, the city registered a total of 10.6 million and nearly 12.3 million tourist arrivals respectively under the scheme.
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