fewer visits than expected during Chinese New Year<\/strong>.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe IVS was suspended completely at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was later reintroduced but only through in-person applications<\/strong>, which can take up to two weeks to be approved<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMGTO director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes said: “The in-person process would make tourists hesitant<\/strong>, and a switch back to a digital application process would increase visitor numbers significantly.”<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis year\u2019s Chinese New Year week saw just 90,615 visitor arrivals across<\/strong>, which represents a 65.3 per cent decline from the 261,069 arrivals last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The e-visa programme would benefit tourism by allowing more Chinese residents to travel to Macau.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":14955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"The Macau Government Tourism Office is advocating for the reinstatement of the electronic Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) for Chinese citizens to revitalize the city's tourism sector. This initiative follows a significant decline in visitor arrivals during Chinese New Year, attributed to the cumbersome in-person visa application process. Reintroducing the e-IVS is projected to substantially increase visitor numbers, directly impacting Macau's economic recovery and gaming vertical performance.","focusai_entities":"Macau Government Tourism Office, Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, Chinese government","focusai_location":"Macau, China","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (0.8), operator_casino (1.0), investor_analyst (0.9), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"GGR Impact","query":"What is the projected GGR uplift for Macau's gaming verticals if the electronic Individual Visit Scheme is fully reinstated, and over what timeframe?"},{"label":"Regulatory Timeline","query":"What is the anticipated timeline for the Chinese government to approve and implement the electronic IVS, and what are the primary regulatory hurdles?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[157,16338,158],"tags":[23906],"class_list":["post-14953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-news","category-east-asia-news","category-slider-home","tag-macau-casinos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14953"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15020,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14953\/revisions\/15020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}