The three neighboring cities of Macau, Zhongshan and Zhuhai launched today a joint destination promotion in South Korea, taking advantage of the Korea World Travel Fair which opened this Thursday in Seoul. In a Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) initiative, as this year’s chairman of the “Zhongshan, Zhuhai and Macau Tourism Departments Regional Cooperation”, the three cities will carry out this afternoon a destination promotion seminar. At the event, each city will present its tourism development situation and attractions. A travel mart with Korean travel trade counterparts will follow in the program. The three tourism entities will also meet the local press and host a dinner reception today. The joint promotion takes place on the sidelines of Korea World Travel Fair (KOFTA), the country’s major international travel show, where Macau, Zhongshan and Zhuhai also have a group presence under the same roof of the Macau booth. MGTO Deputy Director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes leads the Macau delegation to the Republic of Korea. The Zhongshan delegation is headed by the city’s Tourism Administration Director, Che Wei. Zhuhai is represented by Teng Wen, a deputy section head of the Zhuhai Tourism Administration. The three cities, in the past part of the ‘Fragrant Hill’ region, have brought a delegation of close to 50 people to Seoul, including around twenty representatives of Macau hotels, travel agencies and transport companies. The Macau Government Tourist Office launched today, first day of the four day long KOFTA, its first guidebook specially tailored to the Korean market. MGTO is also preparing to launch in June, a Korean version of the “Macau Meeting Planner’s Guide”, targeting the South Korea meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) sector. Macau is participating in KOFTA with its largest booth ever to the fair. The booth is decorated with the colors of MGTO’s promotional theme “Experience Macau”. Besides a large area available for travel trade contacts, visitors to the booth will be able to have a series of experiences, like trying some of the delicacies of Macau, have their caricature and profile cutting done by artists and play Macau Grand Prix video games. MGTO’s colorful campaign “Experience Macau” featured at the Macau booth at KOFTA already caught the eye of the public in South Korea. MGTO was awarded with the ‘Best City Tourism Promotion Campaign in the Asia-Pacific Region’ by the first edition of the Seoul Tourism Awards 2008. The award presentation ceremony will take place on June 27. South Korea is one of MGTO’s priority markets. Visitor arrivals from Korea to Macau have witnessed strong two-digit increases during the past four years, directly linked with the launch of air connections between the two destinations. At present, Air Macau and Viva Macau provide direct flight services between Macau and Korea. For the first four months of this year, Korean visitor arrival figures showed rapid growth recording 111,297 visitors to Macau with an outstanding increase of 57.57 percent, ranking fifth among the top ten visitor-generating markets for Macau. Last year Macau welcomed 225,417 visitors from the Republic of Korea, a 38.5 per cent year-on-year growth, with the country positioned as Macau’s seventh largest visitor source market.
