Macau’s tourism carrying capacity ‘within optimal range’
Results published by the Government showed that Macau’s tourism carrying capacity in 2007 had stayed within the social optimal capacity range.
The study was commissioned by the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture and conducted by the Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT).
A two-part survey was carried out in the study, the first being questionnaire interviews at important siteseeing locations with both local residents and visitors. A total of 5,158 residents and 5,120 visitors were sampled in this part of the survey.
Results from the first part revealed that local residents were generally dissatisfied with the environment and local transportation, and their perception of crowdedness became more intensive with increasing number of visitors.
At the same time, visitors had similar perception of crowdedness, though they usually gave a more generous rating than residents to most of the indicators studied.
Both residents and visitors became less than satisfied with the crowded surroundings and gave generally lower ratings to the services and facilities when daily average incoming visitors reached a level of 75,537.
With increasing number of daily average visitors, residents became more sensitive to crowdedness and issues with local transportation, while visitors became more sensitive to crowdedness, border clearance and environment quality.
Linear regression showed that the optimal social carrying capacity of Macau is between 69,000 to 79,000 visitors.
Macau received a total of 27 million visitors in 2007, with a daily average of 73,973.
The number was thus within the optimal social carrying capacity as computed by the study.
Visitors from mainland China generally had better evaluations of all services and facilities except border clearance, compared with those from Hong Kong, Taiwan and other places.
Group Chinese travellers had better impression about crowdedness and local transportation than individual travellers.
The second part of the study was to collect data and information from government departments and stakeholders in several tourism-related sectors to estimate their full-load capacity.
It covered eight main services and facilities, namely hotel accommodation, restaurants and dining, buses, taxis, ferries, border clearance, tourist attractions and inbound tour handling.
Results revealed that among the eight facilities studied, six of them could not meet the optimal social carrying capacity. Only restaurants and dining, and border clearance (when all seven entry points were taken into consideration) stayed above the range.
The IFT pointed out that this may serve as a signal that certain sectors may need to enlarge their operation scale to meet the optimal level, although they may face various challenges including geographical, capital and manpower limitations.
The study concluded that residents and visitors were sensitive to crowdedness and quality of tourism services and facilities as visitor arrival increased.
Government departments and stakeholders may wish to focus on these issues by providing better service to visitors rather than continuously looking for new markets.
It also suggested that attention should be given to better management of industry operations and facilities, manpower training, and professional transportation and town planning.
