11
The reality
mentality
He news was expected, despite the visa restrictions and some
T
unfounded fears from certain sectors in Hong Kong.
Macau maintained 2007’s good performance and surpassed
the 30 million visitor mark in 2008. For the first time in its
history, the city overcame its neighbouring SAR in the number of visitors
it attracted in a single year.
This is the first quantitative step, however, quality is quite a different
matter. People visiting Macau still stay for a very short time while, on
average, those visiting Hong Kong stay for much longer.
It’s simple to see how it’s better to have fewer visitors staying four
nights than more visitors staying only 1.3 nights. Still, we consider it to be
a good start.
How can we persuade visitors to stay longer? For starters, we need to
provide better service.
It’s no secret that we still have much to learn in this area. The recent
job fair promoted by City of Dreams was a step in the right direction, like
others that aim to improve the quality of local workers.
However, we need to keep a cool head and accept the obvious:
local workers should not be hired just because it’s the politically correct
thing to do.
By doing so, we are indirectly saying that ensuring a job is more
important than training, or even more important than a college degree.
On many occasions, we are just wasting countless students who
should be proceeding with their studies and going on to university instead
of being seduced into leaving school and joining the job market.
It’s essential to recruit experienced and knowledgeable people from
abroad, especially in the areas where we are weaker. It’s also urgent to
discontinue all the silly fatherly attitudes and hypocritical arguments
aimed only at winning votes at election times. We need to wager on the
long term.
Superior studies have to be supported; scholarships and courses
abroad have to be financed; skilled workers have to be hired from abroad
to help us make Macau more competitive and productive. Otherwise,
we’ll keep on being guided by ill-thought-out, temporary solutions instead
of consolidating the adequate hardware that this city needs to face the
much expected growth brought on by the liberalisation of gaming.
february 2009
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