GGRAsia – Macau marketing in Chengdu to draw Golden Week tourists

Macau marketing in Chengdu to draw Golden Week tourists

Sep 17, 2021 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

Macau’s casino-resort brands are taking part in a five-day marketing campaign, starting on September 23, in Chengdu, capital of China’s Sichuan province, to attract that city’s residents to visit Macau during October’s Golden Week holiday period.

Macau resort operators will take part in order to market their non-gaming products during “Macao Week in Sichuan Chengdu”.

The Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) announced it is staging a roadshow with a number of displays at Jiaozi Plaza, in Chengdu’s Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone.

As part of the campaign, the resort sector and airlines will present a range of travel offers including vouchers toward the cost either of flight tickets, hotel accommodation, or dining, worth in aggregate more than CNY110 million (US$17 million), Macau’s tourism bureau said in its Thursday release.

On September 12, Lei Wai Nong, Macau’s Secretary for Economy and Finance, mentioned Macao Week in Sichuan as one of the campaigns planned to boost Macau’s tourism arrivals for the upcoming Autumn Golden Week, a holiday period in China encompassing National Day, on October 1.

The October Golden Week has in pre-pandemic times been a peak period for tourism to Macau, and for casino revenue there.

On Thursday, MGTO director, Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, said she was confident Autumn Golden Week would see daily tourist arrivals recover to 35,000, Macau News Agency reported.

Only mainland China has currently a mostly quarantine-free travel bubble with Macau.

A new Covid-19 outbreak in the province of Fujian, in mainland China, “may hinder” the recent recovery in casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) in Macau, suggested a Monday note from brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd.

Local authorities recorded 61 new locally-transmitted cases in Fujian on Thursday, linked to the more infectious Delta variant of Covid-19. It was the biggest tally since the outbreak began on September 10.

Macau’s health authorities had already imposed a 14-day quarantine for inbound people from some places in Fujian, including the entire city of Putian, and two districts in Xiamen. Today that quarantine was extended to a village within the administration of Zhangzhou city.

The situation in Fujian is “very severe” and the number of cases is expected to rise, experts from China’s National Health Commission said today, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

It quoted the experts as saying that other cities in Fujian should step up their prevention policies, but stressed so far there was no sign the outbreak had spread to other provinces.