Chinese visitors becoming more astute: report

Monday 26th of September 2016

Macau’s large visitors numbers does not translate into high numbers of overnight visits “with Chinese visitors having to pass through a few hundred hotels within the Zhuhai region,” said a research report from Prof. Glenn McCartney CEO of Insights Unlimited Consultancy.

McCartney notes that the Chinese visitor is “historically and predominantly a day-tripper to Macau”, a result of neighboring-Zhuhai’s flourishing hotel industry.

The research report, titled ‘An examination of the pull and push factors influencing hotel selection by Chinese outbound travelers’ and published in International Journal of Tourism Sciences looks into the hotel selection process of Chinese visitors coming to Macau, as well as marketing and pricing strategies that operators can employ.

“This is particularly important given Macau’s present challenging hospitality competitive climate with several thousand new luxury hotel rooms by 2017 coupled with a decline in complimentary rooms required by casinos due to the reverse in Macao’s gaming fortunes since 2014,” read the abstract.

The report also finds that most repeat visitors to Macau are booking rooms via intermediates, rather than from the hotel directly.

“There is a high repeat visitation rate to Macao with Chinese visitors increasingly astute in their knowledge of hotel and casino offerings meaning a varied message to first time and repeat visitors is necessary.”

The research paper is published in International Journal of Tourism Sciences.