MasterCard Asia Pacific Destinations Index wake-up call for Macau

The first MasterCard Asia Pacific Destinations Index tracking the growth of the region’s tourism doesn’t include Macau in its 20 overnight tourist arrivals and tourists’ expenditure. This absence of Macau from the index results from the MasterCard study only including international visitors, and excluding arrivals from Mainland China and Hong Kong, further underlining the Macao Special Administrative Region’s dependence upon the Chinese and Hong Kong markets.
In 2015, some 14.3 million overnight visitors in Macau represented a 1.8 per cent decrease from 2014. However, Mainland Chinese comprised 64.5 per cent of overnight visitors, a 4 per cent decrease year-on-year, while Hong Kong overnight visitors totalled 3.065 million, which if excluded take the number of international overnight visitors to around 2 million, according to data from the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO).
This break from Mainland China visitors explains the decrease in overnight visitors to the Macau market, thus even with an increase in the number of international visitors Macau is still excluded from the Top 20 Asia Pacific Destinations in the survey who represent about 50 per cent of all International Overnight Arrivals to the 167 destinations covered.
The study is the first MasterCard Asia Pacific Destinations Index – an offshoot of the annual Global Destination Cities Index – to take a more in-depth focused look at these tourism trends, taking data from the national tourism boards of 22 countries and ranking167 destinations, including island resorts as well as towns and cities across the region, in terms of the total number of international overnight arrivals; cross-border spending; and the total number of nights spent in each destination.
According to MasterCard Asia Pacific Destinations Index, Hong Kong ranked 7th with 8.3 million international overnight visitors, Shangai ranked 12th with 5.5 million overnight visitors, Beijing was 18th with 4 million, and Guangdong Province (excluding Guangzhou, Shenzhen & Zhuhai) ranked 19th with 3.9 million visitors.
Attracting international spenders
Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) Director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes said in January that this year the goal was to attract more overnight visitors, while maintaining overall arrival figures at around 30 million, as reported by Business Daily.
This goal was reflected by this year’s January and February data, which saw the number of arrivals from countries excluding China in 2016 post a 0.2 per cent increase year-on-year, from 1.573 million to 1,632 million. The number of overnight arrivals from Mainland China and Hong Kong also experienced a small lift with Mainland China posting a January and February 3.7 per cent year-on-year growth, while Hong Kong arrivals grew 13.7 year-on-year.
“My observation is that it [the increase in December overnight guests] resulted from a synergy effect with the events held in the month and the tourism packages that have been put forward by the sector [of hotels and travel agencies] that have attracted many visitors from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia especially,” said Ms. Fernandes at the time.
Mainland China and Hong Kong spend most
Of the top 20 destinations by total expenditure per day, Shanghai (US$269 per day) welcomed the biggest spenders, followed by Beijing (US$262 per day), Seoul (US$258 per day), Singapore (US$255 per day) and Hong Kong (US$240 per day).
According to data from the MGTO Visitor Expenditure Survey, when it comes to Macau again the exclusion of Mainland China and Hong Kong visitors, which together comprise almost 90 per cent of total tourism expenditure in the MSAR, when left out make the total of tourist spending from MOP51.1 billion (US$6.4 billion) to MOP5.2 billion (US$650 million), pale in comparison to Hong Kong’s US$6.7 billion registered in the MasterCard survey. The data shows more signs of the Macau dependence on Mainland China and Hong Kong overnight tourism expense, with overnight expenses totalling MOP44.7 billion (US$5.6 billion).
Mainland China overnight visitors spent the most amount of money in Macau in 2015, at MOP3,360 per capita, a 19,6 per cent decrease from 2014; followed by Taiwan overnight visitors at MOP2,950 per capita, with a 14,5 per cent decrease. The same data reveals that total expenses from Mainland China visitors decreased 19,8 per cent in 2015.
The Director of MGTO has vowed to increase the number of visitors from Malaysia and Singapore, announced as some of the highest per capita spenders when compared to other territories in Southeast Asia, and so far data from the first two months of the year reveals a small year-on-year increase of 0.6 per cent and 0,4 per cent for Malaysia and Singapore, respectively.