The city currently sees about 100 tour groups arriving daily, with room for incremental growth, a local tourism group head has said.
Andy Wu, president of the Travel Industry Council of Macau, was cited by local media, adding that the figure equates to between 30% and 40% of 2019 levels.
In the first half of the year, the city has seen 349,000 tourists entering Macau through group tours. In June alone, there were 64,000 tourists.
Despite the optimism, Wu has suggested that the figure will only return to 80% of 2019 levels at best, or about 300 groups per day on average. His estimate was based on the changing travel habits of mainland residents.
“The number of individual travelers has returned to about 70% to 80% of 2019 levels,” the tourism association head told public broadcaster TDM – Chinese Radio Macau.
In addition, with tourism activities soon reviving, Wu said the workforce is even tighter, and this is particularly affecting the tour coach driver industry.
“The main reason for the shortage is that there naturally was not much new blood in the industry,” Wu told the radio. “In addition, in the past few years, many of the previous drivers have reached the legal retirement age, and their coach driver license will not be renewed.”
Nonetheless, he added that the situation is better with tour guides and tour group leaders as there had been regular new hires.
Yesterday saw the signing of a cooperative agreement between Macau and Changzhou. According to Wu, Changzhou is a mainland city popular with Macau residents.
The tourism industry will work with airlines to release flights and hotel packaged tours to the city.
HZMB traffic increasing
Traffic over the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge has increased significantly since July, following the implementation of the northbound travel program and an inbound and outbound travel peak during summer.
The daily number of vehicles including passenger cars and trucks, which enter or leave the Chinese mainland via the bridge, hit 8,832 in July, according to the Gongbei Customs in Zhuhai, Guangdong province.
On Sunday alone, the number of inbound and outbound vehicles traveling across the bridge reached a record high surpassing 10,000, according to data from customs.
This year, the vehicle flow through the Zhuhai Port exceeded 1.58 million, a threefold increase compared to the same period in 2019, said the representative, adding that the increasing single-licensed vehicles from Hong Kong constitutes the primary driver behind the surge of inbound and outbound traffic at the port.
