2013-03-14 — /travelprnews.com/ — Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) holds spring banquets today and tomorrow in Taiwan for Macau tourism promotion and exchange with local travel trade.
MGTO hosts the local trade and media representatives for spring banquets in Taipei and Taichung on February 14 and 15 consecutively. Exchange and networking are enhanced during the banquets, where the delegation takes the opportunity to present Macau’s latest tourism development and products, aiming to extend the length of Taiwanese visitors’ stay in Macau. MGTO Director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, Head of Macau Economic and Cultural Office in Taiwan, China, Nadia Leong Kit Chi and Head of Destination Marketing Department of MGTO, Betty Fok attend the above functions.
Fernandes expressed that Taiwan has always ranked as the third largest tourist market for Macau. Taiwanese visitor arrivals to Macau surpassed 1,070,000 last year though the number dropped in comparison with 2011. It was nonetheless delightful to see the number of Taiwanese visitors staying overnight in Macau continuously growing each year and marking a rise of 2.6% in 2012. The proportion of Taiwanese visitors to overall overnight-stay visitors increased year-on-year by 5% in 2012, suggesting that Macau has gradually transformed from a transit station into a tourist destination in the Taiwanese’s perspective, a goal MGTO has long strived to reach.
According to the statistics provided by Statistics and Census Bureau, the number of Taiwanese overnight-stay visitors in Macau hit 414,718 in 2012, a year-on-year growth of 2.6%. The average length of Taiwanese visitors’ stay was 1.76 night. Hotel overnight guests from Taiwan reached 362,707, of which 73.7% checked-in at 5-Star hotels. The latest provisional figures show that the number of Taiwanese visitors staying overnight in Macau maintained a growing trend in the first two months of 2013, a period-on-period escalation of 5.0%. The remarkable percentage once again proves that Taiwan is a market worth unremitting dedication and still demonstrating great potential for development.
This year marks the upcoming 25th Macau International Fireworks Display Contest and the 60th Macau Grand Prix. MGTO will commingle Macau festivities, cultural attractions and modern tourist facilities together, promoting diversely-themed tours to enchant visitors of different nationalities to Macau at different times of the year so that they can experience Macau’s composite aroma of East and West, trendy and antique.
With the strategic positioning of Macau’s development as a World Centre of Tourism and Leisure, MGTO will continue its promotional theme “Touching Moments･Experience Macau”. With the highlighted concept of “365 days a year, every day is good to visit Macau”, MGTO encourages every consumer in Macau to embrace his/her unique touching moments. The office will also enhance its cooperation with airlines and travel agencies in the Taiwan market, suggesting fun ways of exploring Macau and various itineraries including cultural, festive and shopping routes tailor-made for different visitor categories such as “family visitor”, “office worker”, “female segment”, “newlywed” and “silver peer” so that they can explore Macau at any time the way they like. As the hub of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau tourism region, Macau will continue to widen and deepen its collaboration with neighboring regional destinations and its promotion of multi-destination itinerary products this year.
In active pursuit of extending the length of visitors’ stay in Macau, MGTO will focus on six work highlights this year as follows: 1. Sum up planning and research, deepen tourism and leisure system; 2. Optimize industry management and training, actively promote quality tourism; 3. Develop cultural tourism products, promote events and festivals; 4. Support community tourism, strengthen public communication; 5. Innovate promotional techniques, explore new markets; 6. Participate in international organizations, strengthen regional cooperation.
In terms of community tourism, MGTO will initiate the “Development Plan for Community Tourism”, a scheme to develop community tourism in cooperation with local associations. The highlights include guidebook publication, cultural festivals and cultivation of travel information systems. The scheme enables visitors to explore different districts in Macau and encounter extraordinary features of Macau. In addition, MGTO has launched the Beta (trial) version of MGTO’s brand-new website (http://beta.macautourism.gov.mo/index.php?lang=en) and will introduce more Smartphone travel applications to facilitate visitors’ convenient access to extensive travel tips. Currently there are 5 airline companies which operate flights between Macau and Taiwan, together providing over 126 direct flights weekly from Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung to Macau. The flight service is frequent and convenient for visitors.