By Zoe Lai
“I dare not go to the Senado Square or the Ruins of St. Paul’s Church at weekends,” said Eric Cheung, a local Macao resident. “I prefer staying at home during holidays as there are so many tourists everywhere.
“Recently, Macao’s tourism capacity has been a hot topic. The latest statistics released by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) showed that visitor arrivals in 2013 set a record of 29.32 million, which triggered a debate whether the capacity has been exhausted. Over the years, the number of Macao’s tourist capacity has increased dramatically. The expected number was set to be 15.7 million per year in the “Tourism Carrying Capacity of Macao 2004 Study” conducted by the Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) in 2003. Nevertheless, tourist arrivals in 2004 already reached that figure. Later in 2008, IFT released another report, claiming that the expected number of capacity which would be mentally accepted by society was 28 million per year, twice the figure set in 2003.
According to DSEC, after the individual tourist scheme was implemented in 2003, the number of visitor arrivals sharply rose from 11.88 million in 2003 to 29.32 million in 2013, the figure more than doubled in a decade, creating an enormous pressure for the tiny city of only 31 square kilometres. The overcrowded downtown area and inadequate support facilities create certain troubles for local citizens.
Adele Lei, a local citizen who lives near San Ma Lo.
In the past Chinese Lunar New Year, approximately 1.13 million tourists visited Macao from Jan 30 to Feb 6. A huge influx of tourists overcrowded the central downtown from the Ruins of St. Paul’s Church to San Ma Lo, resulting in an unprecedented crowd control to efficiently move the flow of visitors. During Feb 2-5, a single-track crowd control was implemented in the San Ma Lo district. The side of the Correios de Macao was one way only to Nam Van, while the other side permitted a flow in the opposite direction from the Macao Square to the Official Provisional Municipal Council of Macao.
“It’s very troublesome for citizens at that period of time,” said Adele Lei, a local resident who lives near San Ma Lo. “I had to take a roundabout way in order to get to my destination every time. It was a waste of my time.” As she mentioned, a usual five minutes’ walk would take 30 minutes at that period.
Cui Feng-Jun, a tourism expert, stated in his essay “Defining Tourism Environmental Bearing Capacity” that a psychological feeling of local citizens is also important while evaluating tourism carrying capacity. It is obvious that if the issue of tourist overload continues, a negative feeling of local citizens towards tourists, mostly mainland visitors, will escalate.
Recently, a member of the Tourism Development Committee, Kan Man Leng, suggested several potential solutions. First, the Macao government should have a research institute to precisely evaluate Macao’s actual capacity from different aspects and come up with schemes that can control and manage the carrying capacity. Besides, it is essential to emphasize the eco-environmental capacity and pay attention to the psychological capacity of both local citizens and visitors. Overall, the foremost thing is to establish a right concept about tourism carrying capacity, he said. Pursuing quantity excessively should be abandoned.
The above figure shows the number of visitor arrivals from 2003 to 2013 in Macao.