Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Macau Government Tourist Office Annual Marketing Meeting, Antunes pointed out that Macau's tourism industry has entered a new phase of growth and is moving towards diversification. During the first five months of this year, visitor arrivals exceeded 10 million, registering an increase of 21.45% compared with the same period of 2006. Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan continue to be the three largest visitor generating markets, with growths of 19.44%, 23.21% and 1.93% respectively.
Apart from markets of the greater China region, international market arrivals have surged more than 40% year-on-year during the last three years, with Southeast Asia region showing exceptionally strong performance and recorded an increase of 68.3% during the first five months. Malaysia, for the first time, became the fourth visitor generating market, showing a healthy progress towards diversification of source markets.
Antunes said that diversification is the key message today and product diversification helps to minimize the risk of over-dependence on key products, as well as helping to reduce seasonality, spreading tourism demand more equitably throughout the year. MGTO has employed "Experience Macau" as the promotional theme this year under the slogan, "A World of Difference, the Difference is Macau" for a series of promotions around the world through its representatives.
Macau will continue to strengthen regional and international tourism cooperation to attract more visitors to Macau as a single destination or one of the destinations in regional travel, he added.
In 2006, the "Macau Business Tourism Center" has provided services and support to 78 events since April 2006. Under the coordination of the center, the 11th Asia Pacific Life Insurance Congress, to be attended by close to 10,000 participants, will be held in Macau in 2009.
Antunes continued that MGTO will put great efforts in promotion and marketing while working to enhance the overall service quality in the tourism industry, aiming to develop Macau's tourism industry healthily and to achieve diversification. MGTO needs to strengthen the strong partnership between the private and public sectors to achieve long-term sustainable growth.
Following the meeting was a mini mart hosted by MGTO for the local tourism trade to meet with the representatives of MGTO to discuss business opportunities to bring in more visitors. After the opening ceremony, a 170-member delegation comprised of representatives of MGTO, travel trade, Commission for Tourism Development as well as performers headed for Shanghai in various groups for the marketing meeting and "Experience Macau" promotional activities.
