Lusa - Business News - Macau: European travel association calls for mainland to ease visa restrictions

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Lusa - Business News - Macau: European travel association calls for mainland to ease visa restrictions

Macau, China, April 26, 2024 (Lusa) - The European Confederation of Travel Agents and Tour Operators Associations argued on Friday that the promotion of Macau as a destination should include other stops, such as China, where visa requirements are still "an obstacle" to the development of tourism.
"When we talk about how to promote a destination like Macau, we see that it needs to be combined, for example, with mainland China and Hong Kong, because when people take a twelve-hour flight, they don't just go for a few days," Heli Mäki-Fränti, vice-president of the European Confederation of Travel Agents and Tour Operators Associations (ECTAA), told Lusa.
The ECTAA, which is taking part in the 12th Macau International Travel (Industry) Expo, or MITE, has chosen Macau as its preferred destination for 2025, and plans to holds the confederation's congress next year in the territory.
This is only the second time that the meeting has been held outside Europe, after Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, and it is being held "on the initiative" of the Portuguese Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies (APAVT), which is also a member of ECTAA, Mäki-Fränti told Lusa.
The fact that Macau was chosen for this second time out of Europe is "of great importance for Macau" in the view of the president of the Portuguese association, Pedro Costa Ferreira.
"It's a great opportunity. We know that we have to give it time, that European source markets are still of secondary importance, especially with China as a tourist destination, but we also know that this is a long way off and we're making it happen," he said.
After the Covid-19 pandemic and the opening up of China, which had adopted a strict border control policy, the Asian giant "is becoming popular again," Mäki-Fränti told Lusa, while noting that the fact that citizens of some countries, including Finland and Portugal, have to apply for visas to enter China "is an obstacle," especially when it comes to travelling in groups.
Costa Ferreira, the APAVT president, agreed that visa-free travel is "a tremendous facilitator" of tourism, as it "always leads to an increase and an increase in tourist flows." He expressed satisfaction that Portugal's minister of economy, Pedro Reis, had included the issue on the agenda during his recent trip to Macau.
The minister, who took office earlier this month, said on Monday that Portugal would like to be included in the group of countries benefiting from visa-free travel to China and that this has already been communicated to the central government in Beijing.
In March, China extended its visa-free policy for stays of up to 15 days to six European countries - Switzerland, Ireland, Hungary, Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg - after initially adopting the measure for Germany, Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands at the end of last year.
Increasing the number of foreign tourists is part of Macau's policy of diversifying the sector, which is highly dependent on the vast majority of visitors that come from inland China.
In 2019, before the pandemic, international tourists the numbered around 3 million, out of a total of almost 40 million, the director of the Macau Government Tourist Office, Helena de Senna Fernandes, told Lusa on Friday at MITE.
According to Senna Fernandes, in 2023 the number of visitors rose to around 1.5 million and this year the goal is to "go beyond two million" as around 580,000 came to the region in the first quarter.
She also said that Macau is looking to intensify collaboration with "different international airlines" and that a new link between Macau and Istanbul, Turkey, which she says is being planned, could help boost the numbers. However, she stressed, the office must continue to work with Hong Kong and "utilise the resources of the Greater Bay to bring more international visitors to Macau."
The Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, or Greater Bay Area for short, is China's project to create a world metropolis out of Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in Guangdong province, with a combined population of more than 86 million.

CAD/ARO // ARO.
Lusa

Agency : LUSA
Date : 2024-04-27 11:12:35

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