MGTO expands South East Asian market with new gimmicks

The Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) invited tourism stakeholders from Southeast Asian countries to participate in the “Macau Race” program. The participants are required to design tour itineraries to discover Macau’s unique characteristics, with the objective to involve the travel trade from Southeast Asian countries in promoting tours to Macau and to further diversify Macau’s source markets. MGTO Director João Manual Costa Antunes indicated that Southeast Asia is a major source market for Macau. At present, there are direct flights between Macau and Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and the passenger volume is growing continuously. This program would further arm the travel trade with knowledge on the interesting and attractive aspects of Macau. Last year, visitor arrivals from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines grew significantly by 79.8%, over 100%, 38.3% and 22.1% respectively. 40 tourism stakeholders from travel agencies and airline companies in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines arrived Macau on June 30 for a four-day visit. Upon arrival, the delegation visited the world heritage sites of Macau and other major tourist attractions, and heard a presentation on the latest tourism development of Macau by MGTO. The delegation participated in the challenging “Macau Race” today (July 2). Divided into 20 teams, each team was given photos of 10 scenic spots in Macau, Taipa and Coloane, a guidebook and MOP$100. Each team has to design their own itinerary that consists of the 10 scenic spots and complete a mission at each spot within the allocated time. Participants would collect an alphabet from each spot they have visited and after gathering all 10 alphabets, they would have the name of the final station – the Macau Tower, where they have to finish the Skywalk X at the 10th highest freestanding tower of the World or have 15 minutes added to their total time spent. The fastest team to finish the entire itinerary would win. MGTO organized a prize presentation dinner at the Westin Resort and the winners were awarded medals, certificates and gifts while other participants received souvenirs.