By Tony Lai ... Ready for It? Teasing the genie out of the bottle
Clamping down on zero-fare tours, introducing innovative technology, and diverting travellers from crowded sites, as well as strengthening cross-departmental efforts, might enable the city to welcome more visitors
T 18 DECEMBER 2017
ourism carrying capacity has been a common catchphrase during the discussions of local tourism in recent years; in particular regarding the 2013-14 period when the city’s tourist arrivals
broke the 30 million threshold. Amid ongoing complaints from residents about the impact of tourism upon their lives and transportation, they now face a daunting prospect: more and more travellers will arrive in coming years. With a projection of receiving up to 40 million
visitors annually by 2025, industry observers and academics suggest the city should tackle zero-fare tours and infrastructure as well as enhancing collaboration among different government departments to accommodate the influx of visitors – though some remind that the city should keep its eye on pursuing the growth of quality rather than quantity tourism. In the long-awaited Macau Tourism Industry
Development Master Plan unveiled in September, Macao Government Tourism Office put forward eight key objectives, 33 strategies and 91 short- to long-term action plans to ‘ensure the sustainable and diversified growth of [sic] Macau’s tourism industry’. The 300-page report, in the making for two years,
forecasts that the number of visitors to the city could grow from 30.95 million last year to 33-35 million by 2025 in the low range of estimate or to 38-40 million in the mid-range of estimate. According to a survey conducted for the report,
residents are dissatisfied with the tourism carrying capacity of the city’s transportation, public facilities and infrastructure, finding: ‘Transport is of most concern, where the majority of residents expressed that there is overcrowding of cars and people, roads are always under construction, and residents find it difficult to ride on public transportation’. It did note, however, that the city could handle more travellers in the future ‘with efficient management’.
Quality growth Z
eng Zhonglu, programme co-ordinator of gaming and recreation management at Macau Polytechnic Institute, believes Macau should
pay attention to attracting quality tourists, namely high-spenders and international travellers. Visitors from the Greater China region – Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan – accounted for over 90 per
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