Macau | Lack of planning blocking city’s transition to non-gaming quality tourism diversification – Tourism Researcher

Macau (MNA) – Without sensible tourism policies, processes and infrastructure there will not be an effective transition to non-gaming diversification or quality visitation and in how the city deals with low season periods, an Associate Professor in International Integrated Resort Management at University of Macau, Glenn McCartney, told Macau News Agency(MNA).

As visitation to Macau during the Chinese New Year Golden Week holiday period registered 667,666 people in its first five days, 9.2 per cent more than in the same period last year, the tourism expert told MNA that there is not a proper plan in place to channel increased visitor numbers to actual spending in the non-gaming sector.

“There’re many obstacles to non-gaming diversification in Macau; until we overcome some of those obstacles in branding, infrastructure and policy it will be baby steps towards some kind of non-gaming revenue,” said McCartney.

According to the tourism expert there is a lack of planning in how to deal with the “seasonality” of local tourism or how to deal with low season periods beyond the Chinese New Year and public holiday periods.

“[During these periods] we do fantastic revenues but then we move into soft borders like benchmarks where we move it to the middle of May and what we do now. Of course, we’ll always have player visitation to the casinos because we really don’t have a convention industry or a leisure industry to prop up tourism,”

For McCartney this lack of planning has led to an “up and down scenario” where the main solution revolves around hotel room “flash deals” that result in lower room revenues in order to attract leisure travellers who “hopefully will make a leisure travel at the last moment”.

Although agreeing with the Macao Tourism Industry Development Master Plan presented by the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) last year, the tourism expert stated that a “plan is as good as its application” and that a master plan should be used to set clear goals, appoint the people responsible for them and hold them accountable for their execution.

“That’s what the master plan is all about – who’s accountable, who has to deliver it, in what time frame and who has to deliver it. […] Even if you don’t get it all down into action, even some would be good for Macau,” he added.