MGTO Welcomes New Indian Representative

MGTO executives congratulate India’s new representative

Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) has appointed a new representative office to promote the city in India. MGTO Director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes signed a contract with Arzan Khambatta, the newly appointed General Manager of MGTO’s representative office in India , in January.

Following an extensive recruitment campaign launched in 2014, MGTO selected VFS Global to undertake the work of promoting Macau in India, with the contract effective from January 2015.

On 28th January, MGTO held an inauguration in New Delhi to announce to the Indian travel trade and media the new representative office for Macau along with the promotional activities planned for India. MGTO Deputy Director Cecilia Tse was in the Indian capital to chair the inauguration, which was held on the eve of the opening of India’s major travel and tourism trade exhibition - South Asia’s Travel and Tourism Exchange (SATTE), held from 29th to 31st January - where MGTO also promoted Macau. This year, MGTO was SATTE’s ‘Feature Destination Partner’, with Cecilia Tse addressing attendees at both the opening ceremony and welcome dinner of the leading travel show.

MGTO first opened a representative office in India in 2002. Throughout the years, MGTO has rolled out various promotional activities on the sub-continent, including multi-destination promotions with Hong Kong, while at the same time it has benefited from the attention brought by high profile Bollywood events hosted by Macau, which all together have contributed to increased interest among Indians to visit Macau.

India is one of the most important potential international source markets for Macau. Following double-digit growth in previous years, the number of visitor arrivals from India maintained healthy momentum in 2014, with more than 167,000 visitors for the whole year, up 4.5 per cent year-on-year. Some 80.1 per cent of visitors stayed overnight in Macau in 2014, 3.1 per cent more than the previous year.