Officials are hoping to bring around 1,000 professionals to the territory to alleviate a skills shortage that many say is holding Macao back.
Business
Economists at the University of Macau say improvements in the territory’s economy will ‘be more obvious’ this year, but hurdles remain.
Despite a crippling labour shortage, the migrant worker population has grown by less than 10,000 since Macao’s emergence from the pandemic in January.
The event, now in its eleventh year, welcomed a record 30,000 attendees and saw the transaction of some 2.5 million patacas worth of business.
The month of June is traditionally a flat one for the territory, with Macao’s gaming concessionaires affected by a seasonal slowdown.
They make up a tiny fraction of the overall total, many are here for less than a day, and hardly any come from Portuguese-speaking countries.
However, the steep drop in earnings come as Transmac and TCM make major investments in electric buses, which make up a growing portion of the city’s fleet.
There were no significant increases in the total number of guests, average lengths of stay or the proportion of guests from long-haul destinations.
UM Professor Glenn McCartney says if Macao wants to diversify its tourism offerings, it needs to import more talent.