The Macao International Travel Industry Expo concluded yesterday after welcoming the largest number of attendees in the 11-year history of the event, Macau Post Daily reports.
At least 30,000 people flocked to the Venetian’s Cotai Expo over the three days of the expo. There were 512 exhibitors and nearly 500 buyers, according to the head of the Macao Government Tourism Office, Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes. She said sales reached 2.5 million patacas.
More than 39 countries and regions from Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe and Oceania were represented at the expo, according to Macau Post Daily.
There was particular interest in the potential of the Southeast Asian market. Liu Xianfa, commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Macao, told media at the expo that Southeast Asian countries were an important source of visitors “with more than 1.12 million tourists from Southeast Asia visiting Macao in 2019, and 200,000 so far this year.”
[See more: This is how many foreign passport holders came to Macao in the first five months of 2023]
Senna Fernandes mentioned “markets such as Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and other countries in Southeast Asia” as helping the recovery of the territory’s tourism industry.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies (APAVT) announced at the expo that its 50th congress, scheduled for 2025, would take place in Macao and involve at least 750 delegates.
Pedro Costa Ferreira, the APAVT’s president, told the Lusa news agency that event would be “the largest meeting in the Portuguese tourism sector” and having it in Macao signalled “the resumption of normal operations” after the city scrapped its zero-Covid policy earlier this year.
