Macau hoteliers association pushes for Greater Bay Area tourism packages

The association wants to promote the Greater Bay Area for multi-destination trips to attach high-spending tourists.

Macau.- Lawmaker Cheung Kin Chung, who is also president of the Macau Hoteliers and Innkeepers Association, has called for Macau to link up with Hong Kong and nine mainland Chinese cities in Guangdong province to create multi-destination packages for tourists. 

He says this would help to promote the region and offer a more competitive tourism product. Cheung said that Macau needs to look beyond its traditional source markets and that the Greater Bay Area has the potential to bring in new high-spending tourists. 

According to Asian Gaming Brief, he said: “There are 70 million people that live in the Greater Bay Area, Macau has its own charm, so we need to dive deep into that market.”

Macau seeks to diversify from its reliance on gambling. Sands China’s president Wilfred Wong recently stated that the region needs to increase its hotel room supply and identified the relatively low inventory of hotel rooms in Macau as being an issue for the growth of MICE tourism.

In January and February combined, Macau registered almost 3 million inbound visitors, following the lifting of most Covid-19-related countermeasures in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau.

Visitors from mainland China accounted for 1,003,999 of those visitors, while 523,271 came from Hong Kong. In 2022, Greater Bay Area visitors arrivals represented 75 per cent of total visitor arrivals at 3.85 million. This was during a period of strict border control measures.