Macau aims to broaden and diversify its tourist base, with particular appreciation for Portuguese visitors, according to Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) Director Helena de Senna Fernandes. She made the remarks during the annual congress of the Portuguese Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies (APAVT), held in Spain.
The 50th APAVT Congress will return to Macau from 2 to 4 December 2025, marking the sixth time the event will be hosted in the SAR.
“We believe the conditions are in place for another exceptional APAVT Congress in Macau, allowing Portuguese tour operators to experience the renewed energy driving our destination,” said Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes in Huelva, Spain, where the 49th APAVT Congress concluded on Sunday.
At the event, MGTO hosted a “Macau Night” on Friday that gathered around 640 delegates from the Portuguese travel industry. During the evening, APAVT symbolically handed over the flag for next year’s congress to MGTO and Galaxy Entertainment Group, which will host and co-host the event at the Galaxy International Convention Centre.
“Since we last hosted the congress in 2017, there have been numerous developments: Macau has been designated a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy; several historic areas are being revitalised as community tourism attractions; new tourist complexes and hotels have opened; and there is a concentrated effort to boost initiatives such as ‘tourism+conventions and exhibitions,’ ‘tourism+culture,’ ‘tourism+gastronomy,’ and ‘tourism+events.’ Additionally, there are expanded opportunities for multi-destination tourism across the Greater Bay Area of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau,” she noted.
Macau’s tourism recovery following the pandemic “is progressing at a strong pace,” she added, with nearly 26 million visitors in the first nine months of this year, representing approximately 86 per cent of 2019’s figures. “Beyond simply restoring visitor numbers, our focus is on expanding and diversifying our visitor sources, particularly internationally. Portugal remains one of our most valued markets due to the historical bonds of friendship that unite us, and Macau’s position as ‘one centre, one platform’—a world centre of tourism and leisure, and a service platform for economic and trade cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries.”
Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes highlighted that since the end of the pandemic, MGTO’s partnership with APAVT has driven initiatives with tour operators, aiming to revitalise visitor flows between Portugal and Macau, while also reaching out to Spanish and broader European markets.
APAVT President Pedro Costa Ferreira reflected on the support they have provided to Macau, including its presence at Fitur—one of Madrid’s largest tourism fairs—where in 2023 they brought “a significant group of Spanish businesspeople.” He also pointed out that two annual meetings of the European Travel Agents’ and Tour Operators’ Associations (ECTAA) are scheduled for 2025, during which Macau will be named the “preferred destination.”
“In the year when we celebrate our 50th congress, we’ve chosen to host it in a place that is not only a city but a fantastic tourist destination, and with a team that represents not just a destination but a close group of friends (…),” said Pedro Costa Ferreira, vowing that APAVT will make it “the best congress ever.”
On 1 December 2023, at the 48th APAVT Congress in Porto, the association announced that Macau had been selected as the preferred international destination for 2024. This annual ‘preferred destination’ initiative aims to stimulate tourism flows to a particular location through collaboration with APAVT and its members, especially in tourism promotion.
Earlier, on 30 June 2023, the director of the Macau Government Tourism Office expressed hope that “nearly a thousand representatives” from the tourism industry would attend the APAVT Congress in Macau, while Pedro Costa Ferreira estimated “at least 750 to 800 people.”
This post was originally published on here
