Tourism Master Plan to be concluded in July

MGTO head Helena de Senna Fernandes

A master plan for the tourism sector will be concluded in July 2017, informed the Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) director Helena de Senna Fernandes during the bureau’s annual press conference held yesterday morning at the Macau Tower.

“This year our major project is to evaluate and finalize the Macau Tourism Industry Development Master Plan. We have been talking with several stakeholders about certain projects so we can finalize [it]. [This should happen] around July,” said Fernandes at the press conference that MGTO organizes yearly to announce relevant developments and results achieved during the previous year, as well as inform about the Office’s plan for the year ahead.

Regarding the year of 2017, the head of MGTO emphasized the centrality of completing the Tourism Master Plan.

The document outlines four main focal points to be addressed in order to meet the tourism development goals set out in the MSAR’s Five-Year Development Plan (2016 – 2020): develop a diversity of tourism products, evaluate event effectiveness and initiate new projects; enhance industry service quality and optimize industry incentive system; unleash synergistic effects and enhance destination promotion; strengthen multilateral cooperation mechanisms, actively participate in international organizations.

In relation to the first point (develop a diversity of tourism products, evaluate event effectiveness and initiate new projects), Fernandes noted the tourism related studies that will be undertaken include a study on the feasibility of the Cultural Tourism Project in Ká Ho, an evaluation on the results from the so-called “mega events”, and a review of the new tourism products made available last year. Furthermore, a new market study that aims to address Brazil as a potential tourism market for the region will also be conducted.

“The village of Our Lady of Ká Ho will become one of our tourism attractions, as we hope that this place becomes known to tourists,” the MGTO director said, informing also that the annual events in 2017 will see the third edition of the Macau Light Festival as well as the second edition of the Macau Film Festival.

In relation to the enhancement of quality services, MGTO will continue to promote training for several activity sectors, primarily through an online learning platform that will allow industry workers to receive training at home or in their workplace. Fernandes also announced that the Tourism Awards would expand this year to include the Travel Agencies and Services.

In relation to the third focal point (unleash synergistic effects and enhance destination promotion), the Office has set a target to increase promotion in order to attract more tourists from mid-haul markets such as Malaysia and Indonesia for 2017.

Last but not least, in an effort to place the region on the map of world tourism, MGTO will seek to host major tourism-related conferences and exhibitions, such as the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Travel Mart that will be held in the territory this September.

In the pursuit of this goal, MGTO is also working on an application to UNESCO in order to become a Creative Cities Network member in the field of Gastronomy.

The budget for 2017 will total MOP1.44 Billion, which will be drawn from the MSAR budget, PIDDA and the Tourism Fund. .

“The general budget suffered a cut of about two percent from last year… We hope to manage it more effectively,” Fernandes said.  At the same time, the budget that PIDDA commands has increased about sixfold, which is related to the high number of overseas projects.

anima’art nam van to open bidding this year

During the Q&A session that followed the MGTO press conference held yesterday, the director of the bureau informed that Anima’Art Nam Van will open bidding  this year. As the Times reported in October last year, the management of IFT Café, located in the space, will be under public tender that at the time was being prepared by the cultural authorities. It is not clear whether the bidding will only be related to the F&B space or if other shops might be included too.

Year closes with more visitors but less spending

Following an evaluation of the tourism sector in 2016, the director of the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO), Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, acknowledged that the year brought another record in terms of visitor arrivals. According to preliminary figures, this figures reached a total of 30.95 million.

Fernandes mentioned that from this total,  28 million arrive from Greater China markets, a figure that equaled 2015. Growth in the International visitor arrivals appeared to surge by 7.9 percent.

Another of the achievements of 2016 was the fact that it was the first time over the last ten years that overnight-stay visitors (15.7 million) outnumbered same-day visitors

Such a result contributed to the growth of the average length of stay for overnight-stay visitors that stood at 2.1 days, while the average length of stay for visitors in general remained stable at 1.2 days.

Although the figures on the number of visitors have grown, this did not happen in relation to figures regarding visitor expenditure.

As mentioned also by the MGTO head, the expenditure between January and September last year suffered a decrease of 7.1 percent, led mostly by the fall on gaming related expenses (- 8.7 percent) but also due to a decrease in general spending that fell by 2.6 percent year-on-year.

Leading the countries of origin of the visitors continued to be South Korea, recording an impressive surge of 19.5 percent (662,000), followed by Japan which recorded 6.5 percent (300,000) and the Philippines (+ 3.7 percent).

The largest increase was recorded by the number of visitors from Thailand which grew an impressive 30.6 percent.

The average hotel occupancy over the year remained in between 82 to 84 percent of capacity, figures that Fernandes explained on the sidelines of the press conference event, which were related to several factors, among them “the fact that the hotel rates have decreased.”

All facts led the director of MGTO to state that she is “cautiously optimistic” for the year ahead.