According to Macau’s Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC), a total of 1,139 MICE events were held in 2023, with the number of events recovering to 74% of 2019 levels. The number of attendees was 1.6 million, recovering to 79.6% of 2019.
Among those events were 1,058 conventions, with a significant year-on-year increase of 290% to 170,000 attendees. The number of exhibitions was 64, with attendance of 1,422,000 up 3.3% year-on-year. A total of 7,199 exhibitors and 59,879 professional visitors were attracted to these shows, representing year-on-year increases of 27.5% and 45.5% respectively.
The number of incentive events was 17, with the number of attendees increasing by 400% year-on-year to 11,000.
According to the DSEC, based on preliminary estimations, the non-gaming revenue generated by MICE activities in Macau in 2023 was around MOP$6.2 billion, representing an increase of around 300% compared with 2022. Among the revenue driven by MICE, 51% came from tourism-related sectors such as hotels, retail and restaurants, while 49% came from non-tourism-related sectors such as convention and exhibition organizing, advertising and other industry-related sectors.
According to the data, the revenue of exhibition organizers in 2023 was about MOP$110 million, roughly 38% lower than the MOP$179 million in 2019.
Analyzed by theme, 492 events or 43.2% of the total were listed as “Business, Trade and Management”, while “Information and Technology” accounted for 15.1% with 172 events and “Healthcare” accounted for 11.4% with 130 events.
The number of participants and attendees at “Business, Trade and Management” events increased by 7.5% year-on-year to 1.31 million, accounting for 81.7% of the total number of attendees.
