It wasn’t long ago that voices in Hong Kong were muttering a resurgent Macau would snatch valuable convention business away from the former British colony.
There’s never been much love lost between the two territories, whatever the official rhetoric about ‘Pan Pearl River Delta’ co-operation.
Now though there’s been an outbreak of fraternal collaboration—probably on the principle that in a recession mutual assistance is a better bet than cutthroat competition.
In that spirit, the Hong Kong and Macau governments have agreed to strengthen cooperation on tourism. The accord was announced at the second Hong Kong-Macau Co-operation Meeting, held in Hong Kong.
There was a lot of talk about ‘frameworks’, ‘partnership, ‘mechanisms’, ‘win-win situations’ and ‘synergies’. Whether this will translate into anything concrete, such as tourists from mainland China to Hong Kong under the Individual Travel Scheme being able to use the same permit for onward travel to Macau, remains to be seen. Given that attracting mainland visitors is a key element in both cities’ tourism policies but that the flow of visitors is in the gift of Beijing and technically outside Macau and Hong Kong’s control, AGI will be interested to see what all this talk will mean in practice.
