Macau mail ads stopped on mainland
MACAU – Advertising by Macau hotels on the China mainland is now being squeezed in the direct-mailing market as well as through mass media, Destination Macau has learned.
Sources at China Post, the state-run mail system operator, say they have been instructed by Guangdong provincial government officials not to approve any flyers or other forms of direct-mail advertising for individual hotels or resorts in Macau.
“If you are asking whether we can [mail] ads for individual clients in Macau, the answer is no,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The China Post system has been seen, until now, as a strong promotional vehicle for the new hotels in Macau that are part of gaming groups.
Fuelled by surging revenues at the casinos, these groups have been spending lavishly in recent months on direct-mailing campaigns to more than one million participants in the mainland’s facilitated individual travel (FIT) scheme.
The FIT scheme was introduced in the wake of the SARs crisis in 2003 and has been responsible for a surge in visitors to Macau and Hong Kong over the past four years.
In the first four months of 2007, visitor arrivals were up nearly 21 per cent at 8,596,632, with most of this growth coming from mainland tourists, more than half of whom were on FIT permits.
Now, however, it looks like even the scheme itself is coming under scrutiny by mainland authorities. Although no formal announcement has been made, restrictions have been effectively implemented on applications for FIT permits.
Visit the www.destination-macau.com website to read this story and more on the Guangdong government’s move last week to revise its policy on Facilitated Individual Travel (FIT) by mainland tourists bound for Macau,
Ian Jarrett
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