The Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) joined hands with Meituan – a mainland-based e-commerce service platform – to launch yesterday their joint consumption promotion campaign, aiming to stimulate consumer spending by promoting cooperation among various small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the northern district and thus boosting Macau’s community tourism and economy. 

Meituan (“Beautiful Group”) is a Beijing-headquartered shopping platform for locally found consumer products and retail services including entertainment, dining, delivery, travel and other services.

The campaign was kicked off yesterday afternoon at the Lok Yeong Fa Yuen Building leisure area in the Fai Chi Kei neighbourhood, on the sidelines of which MGTO Director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes said in a speech that with the development of digital transformation and catering to the trend of digital business and new consumption patterns, quite a few local SMEs have already registered on “Meituan” and another mainland e-commerce service platform – DianPing – to accurately connect with tourism industry customers through big data and help tourists discover the rich “tourism+” integration such as Macau’s diversified food and beverage cultures. 

Senna Fernandes announced the collaboration with “Meituan” to develop Macau’s community tourism through a host of measures: “On the one hand, by setting up a special page for the promotion of Macau’s community tourism in Meituan and DianPing apps to disseminate information on community tourism, and offering customers various discount initiatives by scanning the QR code printed on the campaign’s posters, and, on the other hand, by creating a characteristic face-to-face neighbourhood in the Lok Yeong Fa Yuen Building leisure area, in combination with artificial reality (AR) applications, photo-spot attractions and live streaming activities to attract local residents and tourists alike to visit and splash out in the neighbourhood, benefiting participating SMEs while boosting foot traffic in the area and stimulating economic vitality there.”

Together with Meituan, MGTO has a budget of 2.5 million yuan to provide discounts, so that participants can take advantage of “discounts on gastronomy” and “immediate discounts on hotels”, promoting consumption in the neighbourhood, an MGTO statement said, adding that over 300 SMEs are taking part in the campaign. 

Speaking to the media after the ceremony, Senna Fernandes said that MGTO will continue to launch different promotion campaigns and set up large-scale art installations in various districts: “We will also set up some different types of photo-spot attractions in the city centre or other districts, we will not only focus on the northern district…… the northern district may be a place where the financial gap between weekends and midweeks is relatively large, so we are focusing on it first, but it doesn’t mean that we won’t be able to do it [carry out various promotion campaigns] in the rest of the neighbourhoods”.

Moreover, MGTO launched the “Relax, Have Fun - Macau!” project in March, which is being promoted in three parts in the northern district. The first was launched in cooperation with Hong Kong actor, singer and animation doll collector Ron Ng Cheuk-hei, featuring large-scale copy-righted installations “PIGPI”, followed by “Trendy Tour of Macao” installations of local cultural and creative industries in the Rua da Pérola Oriental leisure area. 

Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) Director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes delivers a speech during yesterday’s kick-off ceremony of its new joint promotion campaign, at the Lok Yeong Fa Yuen Building leisure area in the Fai Chi Kei neighbourhood. – Photo: Yuki Lei