Three Smart Tourism Projects Officially Lift Off

Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) is embarking upon the first stage of its collaboration with Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, in the fostering of smart tourism. Three projects known as ‘tourism information interchange platform’, ‘application for visitor insights’ and ‘smart application for visitor flow’ were put into operation on 26^th March in order to greatly improve convenience for visitors, industry operators and the residents of Macao.

The ‘tourism information interchange platform’ - constructed on the cloud computing platform of the Macao SAR Government - compiles different types of tourism-related data resources in the territory. By formulating unified data standards and rules, the platform fosters the sharing and exchange of tourism data resources across the tourism industry, providing data support for the planning and development of Macao’s tourism industry.

Meanwhile, the ‘application for visitor insights’ obtains data from the ‘tourism information interchange platform,’ gaining insights into the basic behavioural nature of visitors via the analysis of big data for an overview of travel activities, preferences and behaviour of visitors in Macao. In the future, MGTO will solicit feedback from the travel trade and learn about their demands on the ‘application for visitor insights’ to optimise the functions and reap the most far-reaching benefits of the application.

Based upon data acquired from the ‘tourism information interchange platform’, the ‘smart application for visitor flow’ computes the density of visitor flows monitored at 20 popular local tourist attractions within four hours, twenty four hours and seven days, categorising forecast results as ‘comfortable’, ‘moderate’, ‘lightly congested’, ‘congested’ or ‘heavily congested’ in order to create more convenient experiences for visitors and industry operators’ itineraries.

The Labour Day Holiday (1^st to 4^th May) is a peak time for Mainland tourists to visit Macao. MGTO recommends visitors utilise the ‘smart application for visitor flows’ via SMS to ascertain visitor flows in popular tourist attractions, with the goal of diverting visitors to other tourism attractions at peak hours. Moreover, MGTO has partnered Teledifusão de Macau, S.A. (TDM) to broadcast the forecast level of visitor flows at various attractions on TDM Information Channel from 9:00pm 30^th April to 11:59pm 5^th May as references for residents and visitors. MGTO will continue to work closely with the Public Security Police Force (PSP) to enable users to receive the latest information on crowd control measures implemented by the PSP via the ‘smart application for visitor flows’.

To access the‘smart application for visitor flows’, please visit: https://poimonitor.macaotourism.gov.mo.