The Way to the Diversification of Macau’s Social Economy: a Study on Macau’s Cultural Tourism Development

Abstract

Macau is known for its developed Casino industry. In 2007, the revenue from the Gaming industry for the first time surpassed Las Vegas and Macau became the top Gaming City in the world. Although Macau benefited a lot from the gaming industry, its monopoly status in the social economics became one of the unstable factors to the sustainable development of Macau. Diversification is obviously important when Macau encountered financial crisis and a tough policy on the Mainland residences' visit to Macau. At the same time, Macau won the award of World Culture Heritage for its historical and cultural district in 2005, the World Culture Heritage Sites added new factors to the local attractions. Based on the past studies, the culture tourism is a very important sector in the tourism market; it stands for one of the future trends in the tourism development. To the regional development, the culture tourism can lead to economic promotion, culture upgrade and image-rebuilding. It can also promote the development of economic diversification, creating diversified development mode, and optimizing the visitor structure. Obviously, developed culture tourism can be one of the triggers to a better image, more versatile attractions and a sustainable Macau. The development status of the culture tourism in Macau should be defined both from the angle of tourists' experience and the angle of the economics. The purpose of this research is to test the effects of the World Culture Heritage sites on diversification of Macau's local economy, analyzing the feasibility of taking culture tourism as a chance to promote the diversification of Macau's tourism economy. The methods that were used during the research include the survey, observation and literature analysis. A total 300 questionnaires were distributed, where 215 questionnaires were successfully completed during the survey. At the same time, observation on the behavior of the tourist was carried out. On the basis of the information acquired from the survey and observation, the development status of the Macau culture tourism was described and further suggestion on the diversification of the Macau's industry were provided.

Tradition and Culture as the Base for the Tourism Product: Case of Unesco Intangible Heritage

“…In addition to the social, they are an important element of tourism development and of the sense of the traditionality of a place. This is in agreement with the authors Xi and Wei (2010) who pointed out that a tourism product without cultural connotation will not have long-term vitality and appeal.…”

Economic Structure, Social Risks and the Challenges to Social Policy in Macau, China

“…The past success in Macau's gaming industry means that the existing human capital is highly concentrated in gaming and tourism. If diversification is to develop cultural tourism and business services as proposed by economists (Xi & Wei ; Zeng & Zhang ), Macau would have to invest in training for talents with more transferrable skills or import better qualified migrant workers to fill in the gap in the labour market.…”

Sustainable Development for Small Economy and Diversification from a Dominant Industry: Evidence from Macao

“…Since diversification can reduce a nation's economic volatility and increase its real activity performance, so having a diverse economy has long been thought to play a key role in a sustainable economy [5]. Therefore, both the Macao government [7-10] and scholars [11][12][13][14] have recognized the importance of economic diversification, which is the source of long-term economic growth [5,15,16]. Moderate diversification of the economic structure is a way to drive economic sustainability in Macao.…”

“…The Macao government also announced its policy spindle for gambling industry development, "adjustment of the appropriate scale of gambling industry" [7,9]. Recently, some researchers have studied the sources of threats and challenges to Macao's economic development [11,17], the ways Macao's economy is developing and diversifying [11,13,14,17,18] and sustainable tourism development in Macao [12]. They supported the development of moderate economic diversification and agreed that by controlling the scale of the gambling industry, more resources could be unlocked and reallocated to non-gambling industries [19].…”