The Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) has indicated that it will organize a Macau Week promotional visit to Xi’an in the second half of the year, just weeks after the Chinese city was added to the Individual Visit Scheme.
Macau Week is a large-scale event organized by the MGTO since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It focuses on mainland China, aiming to attract mainland tourists to visit Macau. Previous events have been held in Beijing, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Chongqing, Qingdao and Tianjin.
All six of Macau’s six concessionaires typically participate, in collaboration with representatives of the Macau tourism industry.
The MGTO said Thursday that with the mainland having included Xi’an and Qingdao on the list of cities for the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS), and considering Qingdao hosted Macau Week last year, it made sense to organize a similar event in Xi’an 2024.
The two cities have been designated as IVS cities and able to issue associated visas for visitation to Hong Kong and Macau since 6 March. This is the first time the mainland government has added cities to the IVS in 17 years, bringing the number of mainland cities that can issue IVS endorsements to 51.
Xi’an currently has three direct flights to Macau every week, while Qingdao has five.
The MGTO has already visited Xi’an and Qingdao accompanied by three Macau tourism associations and exchanged views with the local tourism authorities on tourism cooperation, with a view to further enhancing exchanges and cooperation in the tourism sector.
MGTO Director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes also revealed in an interview with local media on Thursday that more Hong Kong tourists are expected to visit Macau during the upcoming Easter holiday, even though it is not a holiday in the mainland.
“We hope to reach an average of 100,000 visitors per day during the holiday, but we don’t have a complete forecast for the time being,” she said.
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