Research On The Development Of The Tourism Of Macao

Macao is famous for its tourism image as a"gambling city", gambling and tourism become its pillar industries, and these two industries play an important role in the development of the economy of Macao. However, gambling and tourism are facing a lot of competitions and challenges. In order to have a continuous development of Macao, the Central Government pointed out clearly in its"11.Five Planning for National Economy and Social Development"that it is important to"Support Macao to develop its tourism and service trades, and to promote Macao's economy in a moderately diverse manner". Knowing that the development of Macao SAR as a gambling city has its own limitation, the government of Macao is trying its best to develop Macao in a diverse way. For this reason, it becomes very important to study the direction of the development of Macao's tourism as well as its appropriate strategies, in order to attain a theory and practical plans for the continuous development and the existence of Macao's tourism.This thesis will first analyse the importance of tourism to the economic development of Macao, and then with the use of SWOT to analyse the current situation of Macao's tourism, stating that although Macao enjoys the advantage of being the world's"gambling city", however, since it depends greatly on one industry, it can be easily influenced by the international financial turmoil as well as the gambling industry of the neighboring countries. The thesis will then do a study on the main sources of Macao's tourists, as well as its existing resources related to tourism, with an objective to develop Macao's images into three different levels, namely from"gambling and entertainment image"to"recreation and entertainment image", and finally to"multicultural tourist city". Indeed, high quality gambling industry, cultural tourism, convention tourism, recreation and vacation tourism, gourmet and shopping tourism should be the five major areas needed to be studied for the future development of the tourism of Macao.