The Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) is planning to launch an intelligent customer service platform supporting eight languages on its official website and mobile app, addressing the language barrier faced by international visitors, MGTO Director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes said yesterday.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of a flower show at the Carmo Auditorium in Taipa, Senna Fernandes pointed out that the platform was still “under construction”, with its trial operation now underway, expecting it to be launched this year.
In view of the increasing number of foreign tourists visiting Macau and considering that local tourist guides may not be fluent in certain languages, Senna Fernandes said, her office plans to launch a translation management system in the hope that intelligent means can be used to assist tourist guides to better carry out their work, underlining that the system could only be launched in the market when its test results proved satisfactory, and that it was still not known whether the plan was feasible or not.
The concept was still in its preliminary stage, Senna Fernandes said, adding that the suitable equipment, facilities and translation software still needed to be identified.
According to a previous MGTO statement, the intelligent customer service platform will comprise Chinese (traditional and simplified), English, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Malay, and Hindi.
Meanwhile, the mainland’s three-day-long Ching Ming Festival holiday ended on Saturday, and Senna Fernandes noted that as the Easter and Ching Ming Festival holidays have come to an end, Macau recorded a daily average of about 100,000 visitor arrivals and a hotel occupancy rate of 80 percent during the two public holidays, which was in line with her office’s expectation.
Unlike in Macau and Hong Kong, Easter is not a public holiday in the mainland and Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Senna Fernandes yesterday underlined that some tourism-related large-scale installations have been set up in the northern district. She said that MGTO will cooperate with several cultural and creative groups in adding more tourist attractions to various places in the northern district (known as “bak koi” in Cantonese), expecting the number of cultural and creative installations as well as iconic photo spots to attract the general public’s attention to community tourism during the upcoming “May Day” holiday all over the city.
The city’s merchants and restaurateurs, those in the northern district in particular, have been complaining about poor weekend business when many locals visit Zhuhai and other cities in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) for shopping and eating-out in large malls, while most tourists tend to swamp Macau’s traditional tourist spots such as the Ruins of St Paul’s and the city’s main square, Largo do Senado, as well as Rua do Cunha in Taipa and Cotai’s resorts.
Traffic police officers carry out crowd control measures in Rua dos Mercadores on Friday, i.e., the second day of the mainland’s Ching Ming Festival holiday.
– Photo: Yuki Lei
