Macao is expecting a "historical travel season" as the Chinese mainland's week-long "Labor's Day" vacation will bring about a travel spree to the special administrative region.

All major Macao newspapers Wednesday painted the rosy picture after the mainland's facilitated individual travel (FIT) scheme was extended to seven other cities in south China's Guangdong Province on Tuesday.

Up to now, the FIT scheme considered as the central government's policy stimulus on Macao's tourism under the framework of the Mainland/Macao Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) has covered 21 cities in Guangdong as well as Beijing and Shanghai since its first launch in July 28 last year.

This means that in the province of Guangdong alone, which is adjacent to Macao, 79 million residents are eligible to apply for FIT travel passports to visit Macao and Hong Kong as conveniently as using their ID cards.

The FIT policy allows simplified travel formalities on the mainland's Hong Kong and Macao-bound tours. So far, Guangdong has approved 3.6 million FIT applications. The number of FIT passport holders has accounted for 67.8 percent of the province's eligible travelers to Hong Kong and Macao.

Of the total, 1.6 million FIT passport holders in Guangdong have made their trips to Hong Kong, and 1.38 million to Macao.

Wu Keng Kwong, chairman of the Macao Tourist Industry Association said that there are some 5,000 to 6,000 individual travelers to Macao on average in normal days. He expected the daily number to rise to over 10,000 during the "Labor's Day" vacation.

He suggested the government add more shuttle buses on major tourist routes to reduce the press on public transport during the travel spree.

Although most of new applications in the seven newly-added cities for implementing FIT scheme may not be able to catch up the "Labor's Day" travel, they are expected to come in large number during the summer travel season, said Wu.

Some industry insiders here hold that as tourists from the mainland account for 55 percent of the total visitor arrivals to Macao, the small market is yet to be prepared to "digest" the increasingly large crowd of travelers. Several new hotel facilities will only be ready to launch business in the latter half of this year.

According to Macao's official market survey, tourists from the mainland are the most lavish spenders on travel and shopping in Macao, who spend 2,948 patacas (US$369) per-capita, as compared to 928 patacas (US$116) of per-capita spending by travelers from Hong Kong. 

(Xinhua News Agency April 22, 2004)