The Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR) government and the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China in MSAR jointly organised an event entitled “Dialogue of Cooperation on Culture and Tourism between Macau and Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)” yesterday at the Macau Institute for Tourism Studies (IFTM), to discuss and exchange ideas on joint tourism development.
The dialogue invited officials from the local cultural and tourism sector, as well as from the mainland and nine Southeast Asian countries and industry representatives.
The nine Southeast Asian countries that participated in yesterday’s dialogue were Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Singapore was the only ASEAN member state that was not represented at the event.
According to the event programme, the main topics of the dialogue were integrating and enhancing regional cooperation in culture and tourism, as well as sharing the opportunities of building Macau into a World Centre of Tourism and Leisure.
Foreign Ministry Commissioner Liu Xianfa said in the opening speech that attracting Southeast Asian tourists will be of great importance for the future development of Macau’s tourism industry, adding he hoped that yesterday’s dialogue will provide further development opportunities between all ASEAN member states and Macau.
Liu pointed out that in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, 1.12 million ASEAN tourists visited Macau, however, Macau received only 200,000 tourists from the 10-nation organisation in the first half of this year, which Liu described it as “low”.
Macau confirmed its first COVID-19 case in January 2020. The pandemic adversely affected Macau’s tourism industry for nearly three years. Macau’s vitally important tourism sector began its gradual recovery last December.
Liu said he hoped that Macau and ASEAN nations would introduce more preferential policies and measures to support the joint development of their tourism industries, and to use tourism as a bridge of friendship and connection between Macau, the Greater Bay Area (GBA), the Chinese mainland and ASEAN countries.
Liu also underlined that the government should utilise technological innovation and artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the quality of Macau’s tourism and service industries, which would turn the local tourism sector into one of the city’s competitive strengths.
Meanwhile, Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) Director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes said that Macau’s economic recovery was promising with the number of tourists exceeding 9.4 million in the first five months of this year, i.e., 54 percent of that of the same period in 2019, among which the Hong Kong and mainland markets had the quickest rebound, she added.
Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Macau SAR Liu Xianfa delivers his opening speech at the one-day “Dialogue of Cooperation on Culture and Tourism between Macau and Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)” at the Macao Institute for Tourism Studies (IFTM) yesterday afternoon. – Photo courtesy of the Commissioner’s Office
