Macau’s charm enchants French reporters

The charm of Macau’s cultural junction enchanted a group of French journalists who completed a visit to the territory today at the invitation of the Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO). During the past five days, seven journalists from tourism and travel media, together with envoys from Le Monde and Le Nouvel Observateur traveled through Macau with camera and note book in hand, and open minds to collect impressions to tell French readers. For the travel journalist, Marc Michel, from Indigo magazine, “Macau’s Mediterranean side will charm French people, mainly because of the contrast with the Anglo-Saxon, more formal, side of Hong Kong.” The more than 400 years of Macau’s history are also a main attraction for French tourists, according to Indigo’s journalist. “The cultural side has a big appeal for French people and Europeans in general,” says the Parisian, who describes Macau as “a very friendly place for families to visit.” Macau’s other attractions, underlines the travel reporter, are “its good gastronomy and a big and inexpensive offer of wines – which is very important for French people.” In the eyes of Michel Creignou, who writes about the atmosphere and ingredients of the world’s different gastronomies and wines, for Elle à Table and Gault Millau, “Macau could be a different discovery of Asia for the French”. “Macau makes a kind of transition between West and East. It’s a city with its own identity compared to the traditional Asia that we know. Macau has a mixed culture and it’s the charm of this cultural mixture that makes Macau an extraordinary place,” points out Michel Creignou, who names Macanese food as a “travel gastronomy”, because it “mixes flavors and influences” that reflect the history of the territory. From last Wednesday to this Sunday, the group has explored Macau, walked through the Historic Centre, designated as World Heritage by UNESCO, visited the new tourism and leisure infra-structures, and tried the best of Macau’s gastronomy. The invitation for the French travel media to explore Macau comes in the context of MGTO to open new markets like France. Since last year, MGTO has a representative office in Paris to promote Macau in the world’s number one tourist destination. MGTO receives every year familiarization groups of different opinion leaders, including media, travel trade, academics and other areas, as a way to show Macau to the world. Last year, MGTO invited close to five thousand people for familiarization visits, one fifth of which were journalists.