Tourism board to delegate more patrol officers at major attractions

Tourists seen in the vicinity of the Sé Cathedral

The Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) has announced a series of measures to gear up for the upcoming Chinese New Year festival, such as offering a forecast of visitor flows at the city’s major attraction sites and delegating manpower at tourist spots to attend to visitor enquiries.
From January 25 to February 2, MGTO will arrange for personnel to provide visitors with tourism information and guidance at 10 tourist spots.
According to a statement issued by the bureau, its online platform Macao Tourism Data plus will post provisional visitor arrival figures for every previous day for the period between January 25 to 31.
It will also provide its “smart application for visitor flows,” which gives visitors and industry operators an outlook of visitor flows and facilitates their itinerary arrangements.
MGTO expects that a significant number of visitors will come to the SAR during the Chinese New Year. To prevent operation of unlicensed tour guides, the bureau said that it will delegate more manpower to patrol at major tourist attractions, ports of entry and tour routes, to ensure the lawful operation of tour groups and safeguard the rights of both visitors and the local travel trade.
MGTO also said that it has maintained regular communication with other local government bureaus in carrying out more inspections and taking concerted action with police authorities to combat illegal accommodation during the Spring Festival.
The tourism authority also said that it has sent letters advising travel agency associations to communicate with travel agencies for the coordination of their itinerary arrangements for tour groups visiting major attractions.
Also yesterday, the bureau released the final data for visitors arrivals in December 2019. According to the data, a total of 3.08 million visitors came to Macau last month, marking a decrease of 13.6% year-on-year.
During the festive period from December 20 to 26, Macau arrivals numbered 984,995, which indicated an end-month improvement from what had been an otherwise slow month influenced by President Xi Jinping’s visit.
Meanwhile, the total visitor arrivals for 2019 was in line with the MGTO’s prediction earlier this month. Official data shows that there was a total of 39.4 million tourist arrivals last year, an increase of 10.1% year-on-year.
MGTO director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes previously estimated that 2019 visitor arrivals “probably will not reach 40 million,” however the total number would “surely” be greater than in 2018.
The tourism authority previously noted that various factors may prevent visitor growth in 2020 from breaching the 40-million mark. The China-U.S. trade war and social unrest in Hong Kong were among the cited factors.
Analyzed by mode of transport, visitor arrivals by land jumped by 32.2% year-on-year to nearly 29.3 million in 2019, with those arriving through the Border Gate growing 14.9%. Visitors entering via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (5.38 million) accounted for 18.4% of the total.
Visitor arrivals by air grew 16.7% year-on-year to 3.84 million, with those arriving at the airport rising by 17.1%. For the same period, visitor arrivals by sea declined by 39.5% year-on-year to 6.26 million. The significant decrease in its passengers reportedly led ferry operator TurboJet to announce a reduction in the salary of the majority of its employees this month.
Concerning a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown cause in Wuhan, MGTO stated that it has forwarded the disease prevention guidelines issued by the Health Bureau (SSM) to the tourism industry, and joined with the bureau to hold two briefing sessions for the tourism and hotel industries to learn more about the situation and preventive measures.
MGTO will roll out a series of activities during the Chinese New Year, including “2020 Chinese New Year Celebration activities” on the first and second day of the Lunar New Year.
The event will feature nine performance teams from different countries and regions, which will take the lead to perform at various tourist attractions and neighborhoods.
On January 27 and February 1, MGTO will stage the “Parade for Celebration of the Year of the Rat”, while the Fireworks Display for Celebration of Chinese New Year will take place on the third night of Lunar New Year. LV