With its location at Cotai Strip, the Venetian Macao Resort hotel offers over 3000 deluxe suites and is thus considered as a flagship project in Macao. It harbours the largest casino in the globe with a large commercial space approximating 300,000 square meters, an exhibition and a convention venue, entertainment and theatre facilities. Originally the Macau peninsula used to be an island, but this was gradually turned into a narrow isthmus by a connecting sandbar.
The seventeenth century land reclamation changed Macau into a peninsula with a flat terrain, although several steep hills reflect the original land mass. Macau has a dense urban environment with no pastures, arable land, woodland, or forest. This has made residents of Macau to be dependent on the sea as a source of their livelihood.
MICE Facilities and Venues
Traders and travellers of west and east have been meeting in Macau from the 16th century, when Macau was the main entry to China and a crossroad for cuisines, commerce and cultures. This history is currently the main attraction, particularly because Macau offers international class hotels with a wide variety of meeting facilities making it easily accessible. It also offers imaginative management, good service and freedom from official interference. Additionally, it is less hectic, less expensive, and conveniently compact. Exhilarating forms of sea transport are available with Macau tour operators making the required transfer arrangements.
Venues range from 7000-seat hall to rooms accommodating various individuals are smart, modern hotels and can convert quickly into dinner, banquet, or cocktail.
Dining at Macao-Resort-Hotel is a pleasant feast of attractive tastes offered by Master Chef from the entire globe. it is such an exciting experience in that it keeps visitors coming back. Food service is ever available at hotel with convenient nodle bars, wonderful restaurants, and in-suite dining services available day and night. Beverages and cocktails are available as well.
Macau Economy
Its economy is based mainly on tourism, with much of it geared toward gambling. In consideration of the limited land resources and the Macau’s population, a policy of close cooperation has been launched with Guangdong and the neighbouring province of Pearl River Delta. Other major economic activities in Macau include export based garment and textile manufacturing, banking as well as other financial services. Clothing industry accounts for three quarters of total export earnings while tourism, hospitality and gaming industries contributes an estimation of over 70% of Macau government revenue and over 50% of its GDP.
Macau is one of the WTO founding members with its representative office is based in Geneva. It has made market opening pledges at WTO basically in the field of financial services while maintaining sound trade and economic relations with over 120 regions and countries with Portuguese-speaking and European Union countries in particular.
Currently, Macau participates in the IMF where World Bank categorize it as a high income economy alongside developed economies as well as developing economies, for instance, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain. Economic growth rate in Macau averaged 13.1% annually between 2001 and 2006. The GDP grew by 22.05% in the last two quarters of 2006.in 2006, the GDP per capita USD $28,436 while unemployment rate was 3.5% during the fourth quarter of 2006.
The number of visitors has been increasing gradually from 9.1 million visitors in 2000, 18.7 million visitors in 2005, 21.98 million visitors in 2006 and the figure is expected to be 25 million visitors this year. Most of these visitors come from the mainland China. Tourism and gambling are the main reason behind the increasing number of visitors. Hong Kong has the highest number of tourist accounting for about 30%.
A dark spot on the Macau economy disappeared after the 1999 return to Chinese rule, Triad underworld violence, this in return has benefited the tourism sector greatly. In addition, Macau was named Asia’s most promising future tourism destination and was crowned with the Future Award 2007. it was voted by over 26,000 German travel trade members of GoAsia; an association that comprise airline companies, tour operators, among others. The World Tourism Organisation ranks Macau as one of the world’s top tourism destinations.
Macau emerges as one of the best known tax haven and offshore financial centres in the world alongside British Virgin Islands (Bahamas), Bermuda among others. Bank of China, Tai Fung Bank, Banco Nacional Ultramarino and Seng Heng Bank are among the most influential banks. Besides, there are various foreign banks established and registered in Macau, these include; HSBC – Macau and Bank of America – Macau.
Being a free port, Macau has a low taxes and no monetary control policy imposed. Offshore service businesses operations are feasible in Macau due to the related offshore law that has been used since 1999. Offshore finance business is supervised and regulated by the Monetary Authority of Macao, while Macau Trade and Investment Promotion Institute controls the supervision and regulation of the offshore non-finance business. The Macau’s local and foreign currency government issuer ratings was upgraded from ‘A1’ to ‘Aa3’ by Moody’s Investors Service, citing Macau’s government’s solid finances as a large net creditor. Macau’s foreign currency bank deposit ceiling was also upgraded to ‘Aa3’ from ‘A1’.
Demographics
According to Forbes.com Macau is one of the densely populated regions in the globe, with a population density of 16,521 persons per square kilometre. 95% of Macau’s population comprises the Chinese, primarily Fujianese, Cantonese, as well as some Shanghainese, Hakka, and overseas Chinese from Southeast Asia. There is a large population of Burmese people. The rest are of Portuguese ancestry and there are Thai and Filipino migrant workers in small proportions.
Many Macanese and Portuguese left Macau in 1999 after being handed to China. Immigrants from mainland China and the influx of overseas workers accounts for the dense population considering that Macau has the lowest birth rate in the world. The population of Macau stands at 508,500 (Macau SAR Government statistics).
Macau’s official languages are both Chinese and Portuguese. Other languages such as English, Hokkien and Mandarin are also spoken by some local communities. English is commonly taught in schools, and is a means of instruction in most tertiary academic institutions. English has become Macau’s “lingua franca” since its economy depends heavily on trade and tourism.
Macau Business Tourism Centre
Established in April 2006 the Macau Business Tourism Centre serves to establish a foundation for thecommunication of tourism industry , to comprehend local industry needs thus strengthening the liaison work in the trade. The Centre is interactive and solicits the opinions of civil and trade associations to achieve set objectives. The centre has a mission of defining Macau’s major strategic orientation relating to various competitive destinations interms of MICE as well as positioning Macau as a more exiciting international meetings destination alongside accelerating its entry into the world.
Climate
The climate at Macau is humid and subtropical. Temperature differences between winter and summer are significant because the seasonal climate is largely influenced by the monsoons. Annual temperature averages 22.3 °C, while monthly temperatures average 28.6 °C. January is the coolest month while July is the warmest month. With its location being the coastal region of south China, Macau has adequate rainfall, averaging 2,030 millimetres.
Nevertheless, winter is mainly dry as a result of the monsoon from mainland China. Humidity is always high averaging between 75% and 90%. Therefore, autumn (i.e. October – December) is the best season in Macau, since the humidity is low while days are warm and sunny. On the other hand, Winter (i.e. January – March) is sunny but relatively cold. Humidity starts to increase in spring (i.e. start from April), while summer has a warm to hot climate characterised by occasional typhoons and rain.
Culture
The mixing of Portuguese and Chinese cultures and religious traditions has left Macau with a unique collection of festivals, holidays and events. Macau Grand Prix in November is the biggest tournament of the year, here the main streets within the Macau Peninsula are converted to a racetrack similar to Monaco Grand Prix. Other annual events include the Macau International Marathon in December, the International Music festival in October and/or November, the International Fireworks Display Contest in September, and the Macau Arts festival in March. Macau International Music Festival is annually conducted by the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macau SAR Government.
References
History of Macau. 2007. Web.
Lo, Shiu-hing. (1989), Aspects of Political Development in Macao, The China Quarterly 120: 837-851.
Matsu’s life and incident. 2007. Web.
Venetian Macau Resort Hotel. 2007. Web.