Macau steps up campaign to arrest Malaysian visitor decline

The Macao Government Tourist Office (MGTO) last week rolled out a major consumer campaign at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur to bolster interest in the destination, as Malaysia has posted a continuous year-on-year decline in arrivals since 2011.

Malaysia is among the top 10 source markets for Macau. However, arrivals from Malaysia declined 2.7 per cent from 2015 to 222,809 last year, a big drop from the 338,058 visitors in 2010. Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, director of MGTO, said the decline was “partly related to economic reasons and we need to find new attractions and (tourism) products to attract repeat visitors.”


Campaign at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur

Tunku Iskandar Tunku Abdullah, MGTO representative in Malaysia, said Macau is now placing greater emphasis on Muslim-friendly tours as there are now seven halal-certified restaurants in the city.

To entice more potential visitors, the consumer exhibition broke away from traditional advertising and leveraged interactive technology like virtual reality and interactive light installations to allow visitors to “experience” Macau’s key festivals such as the Macao International Marathon and 64th Macau Grand Prix.

Emily Tan, manager at Prestige Vacation Network, received good response at the consumer fair and sold more than 300 packages, including mono Macau tours as well as five-day combination group tours to Zhuhai. Zhongshan and Shunde.

Another outbound agent, Esther Leong, ticketing and operations personnel at MJT World Vacations, said the agency’s Parents Day package combining Macau and Zhuhai was also fully booked.

Sponsored Post