The director of Macau’s Tourism Services Department (DST) wants the city to continue to be a platform for attracting tourists between Portugal and China.
“The work developed in recent years in partnership with APAVT, to showcase Macau and to open doors to tour operators and boost tourist flows, must continue”, said Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes.
The person in charge was speaking at the end of the 50th congress of the Portuguese Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies (APAVT), which took place in Macau until this Thursday, 4th.
“Today we close [um ciclo]but we will continue with other work, with the designation of Macau as a Preferred Destination [internacional da APAVT] for 2026 provides the framework to keep this connection alive”, he recalled.
APAVT announced that it once again chose Macau – which hosted this congress for the sixth time – as the association’s Preferred Destination in 2026, which will allow the partnership to be strengthened.
APAVT’s Preferred Destination is a program that includes the areas of communication and marketing, and thus helps the chosen destination to promote itself in other markets.
The director of DST added, in closing, that “another fundamental idea” of the region is that operators and travel agents bear in mind the advantage they have in “accessing the market in the interior of China, taking advantage of the platform provided by Macau to create itineraries and destinations”.
Portuguese people do not need a prior visa to enter China for up to 30 days.
“The partnership with APAVT over the last three years has really been one of our management’s main strategies to boost the Portuguese market, and there have been a series of joint initiatives, above all, to reconnect with Portuguese tour operators”, he had also stated on Wednesday.
Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes discussed the numbers obtained, which, she says, “show this path well”.
“Until October, the number of visitors, both from Portugal and from Europe in general, registered an annual increase in the order of double digits, recovering to around 80% of the values of the pre-pandemic period”, he said.
Specifically, Macau received 3.47 million visitors in October, 10.8% more than in the same period in 2024 and the highest figure ever for this month, it was announced today.
The number of tourists passing through the territory was the highest for any month of October since the Directorate of Statistics and Census Services (DSEC) began compiling monthly data, in 1998, still during the Portuguese administration.
The semi-autonomous Chinese region had also recorded a historic high for September the previous month: almost 3.8 million visitors, 9.8% more than in the same period in 2024.
On January 17, the director of Macau Tourism Services said she expected between 38 and 39 million visitors this year.
In August, Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes set a goal of more than three million international visitors by 2025.
In the first 10 months of the year, Macau received almost 2.97 million tourists from abroad, 14.9% more than in the same period in 2024.