The Ruins of St Paul’s, Macau
BOOMING arrivals to Macau are vexing the city’s ability to comfortably accommodate the crowd, having seen 29 million tourists last year.
Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) director, Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, said at the NTO’s annual press conference last week that it would start formulating a tourism master plan, strengthen industry training and management, enhance tourism service quality, and cooperate with regional and international partners to deal with the influx.
“We’ll continue community tourism and launch four more new walking routes this year covering areas like palafitte in Coloane, the Ruins of St Paul’s to Jardim Luis de Camões, Taipa and the north district (to divert tourist traffic),” she said.
For accommodation, a dedicated team has been assigned to speed up hotel applications, and the NTO is considering opening up family-run accommodation.
But travel consultants were not optimistic. An inbound travel consultant who declined to be named suggested that MGTO reconsider whether it should continue attracting more tourists at all.
“With the current state of infrastructure, narrow roads and limited space result in traffic jams. Coach buses have nowhere to park. There is also no clear delineation between peak and low season due to growing inbound traffic. It’s almost high season all the time. The diversion of tourist traffic is okay but this may create a nuisance to the local community. MGTO should look for markets with many repeat visitors.”
New Point Tourism’s travel department manager, Irene Fu, said: “The diversion of downtown traffic to other areas could help minimise the impact of tourists (on the destination).”
Fu also pointed out that travel consultants hardly benefit from the increase in Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) visitors from China, since this group makes their own travel arrangements online.
“Even though (Macau has) more hotel rooms coming, they will be filled quickly as additional Chinese cities gain IVS status. So, the number of new rooms may still not be sufficient.”
