– Recommendation & Conclusion - “Develop Macau as a Sustainable Tourism Destination in term

In conclusion, Macau is now facing several external competitions from nearby tourism destination. If Macau seeks to achieve sustainable tourism development, it is important for the government to consider the three aspects: economical, social and environmental, and try to implement strategies that balance these three areas. Based on the above findings, we have come out with several recommendations which might be useful for obtaining the goal of sustainable development and maintain Macau’s competitiveness without sacrificing the local community.

Tourism product diversification

Macau’s main tourism products are divided into two parts: world famous casinos and heritage sites.

Historic Centre of Macao which is on the World Heritage List. However, the average length of stay of hotel guests in 2008 is 1.44 nights, according to DSEC statistics, 2009⁵⁰. There is a need for Macau to diversify its tourism products and aim to longer the length of stay. Diversifying the attractions can create more vary entertainment for tourists and can attract different market segments. This can include building new tourism attractions and attract more foreign investments to enhance Macau’s image as an international tourism destination.

Improve existing products

It is important for a tourism destination to continuously improve its tourism products in order to cope with the rapid changing environment and maintain its competitiveness. For Macau, these measures might include proper preservation of the heritage sites, improving transportation network, improving the immigrations, improving accessibility to and from Macau, etc. As mentioned above, tourists’ satisfaction rate towards Macau’s transportation obtained the lowest among other tourism sectors⁵¹. Recently, the government had tried to improve the transportation problems by rearranging public bus routes, which is helping a lot for the transportation network. However, the bus routes are hard for international tourists to

50 The average length of stay per visitor in 2008 is 1.44 nights. Source: Macau Statistics and Census Service (2008), Tourism statistics.

51 The number of satisfied visitors is declining since 2003, and most visitors rated transportation as fair. Source: Macau Statistics and Census Service (2003-2008), Tourism statistics.

understand as all signage and information boards are written in Portuguese and Chinese only. Comparing with other international tourism cities, Macau is comparatively weak in these aspects. We would recommend the Macau government to add English to the information boards and signage, especially in the transportation aspects in order to make the tourists’ travel experience more convenient.

Environmental moves implemented by the Macau government

There is a lot that the Macau government can do to help preserving the environment and reduce pollution.

Macau government has brought natural gas public transportation into Macau and aim to reduce carbon emissions. Since most tourists will take tour buses or public buses when they travel around Macau, having natural gas buses can help to reduce the impact on environment. The whole investment of this project will be 10 billion and totally last for 25 years. The government believes that the natural gas network will cover the whole Macau in 5 years and the natural gas public transportations can start the earliest in 2011 (MacaoDaily, 2 April 2009)⁵². In addition to this project, the government is going to sponsor car owners to transform their existing car into natural gas cars and also offer subsidies for car oil stations and infrastructure in this project.

Furthermore, using renewable energy can be a long term approach for saving energy, one of them is solar energy. However, this might be difficult for private business as installing solar panels can be very expensive and usually they are not willing to sacrifice their profit for the environment. Recently, the government is trying to experiment in using solar energy to supply hot water for one of the public swimming pools (Macau Office for the Development of the Energy Sector, 2009)⁵³. If this is proved to be successful, implementing solar power in hotels can help to save energy and electricity costs.

Promoting environmental campaigns in hotels

Environment is one of the components to achieve sustainable tourism development. There are several approaches that hotels can implement in order to save energy consumption and bring benefits to the local

52 Macaodaily, (2 April 2009). 天然氣公交兩年內營運.

<http://www.macaodaily.com/html/2009-04/02/content_302512.htm>

53 Macau Office for the Development of the Energy Sector (April 2009). 簡訊, Vol. 5, pp2.

environment. Take some examples from foreign countries, a hotel in Australia, spent US$2.4 million installation on solar photovoltaic reduce the hotel's energy consumption by 40% to 80%, depending on time of year. Another example is a hotel in Switzerland started heating ecologically through a district heating network. The heating enterprise burns wood, which heats the water in the pipelines (Weinstein, 2009)⁵⁴. Aside from these methods, hotels can also saving energy and costs by encouraging hotel guests to reuse towels and bed sheets, reducing the use of detergent, use guestrooms’ leftover shampoo for public area carpet cleaning, etc. It is also important for business sectors to know their role for being social responsible to the society. One of the good examples is the Westin Resort Macau; they run environmental campaign in the hotel which monitors the consumption and waste produced every day. According to their figures, they avoided 18000 tones of CO2 emission and they have a water treatment plan to clean the discharge waste eater (Paula C., 2009)⁵⁵.

On the other hand, resource efficient tourism facilities can save money without sacrificing customer comfort and convenience, and can enhance the quality of life in a hotel (Bohdanowicz, et al, 2001)⁵⁶. Hotels can implement this into the design, such as using sunlight to reduce the number of lights in daytime.

These ideas can make customers feel more comfortable and with good management, indoor air quality can also be improved. Furthermore, the hotel staff can also have a better working environment, which is good for long-term. This can also bring good profits to the tourism sectors.

Improving Macau’s service personnel quality

As mentioned in the previous section, the school dropouts is increasing recently due to high wage. This shows that some high school students left school and enter casino for high paid positions. This is an issue need to be concerned as this will seriously affect Macau’s future labor quality. According to Ms. Leong from a management consultancy that specializes in human resources, more than 56% of Macau’s current 330,000 workers have not achieved secondary school qualification⁵⁷. If this trend of leaving school continues, the situation will be worsen as most quality positions will be taken over by expatriates from

54 Weinstein J. (May 2009). Green Power: Hotels implement new systems and programs to give back to the community and save money. HOTELS.

55 Paula C. (2009), Keeping it clean, Macau business - May 2009, pp 66-67

56 Bohdanowicz P., Kallhauge C. A., Martinac I. (2001). Energy Efficiency and Conservation in Hotels - Towards Sustainable Tourism, 4th International Symposium on Asia Pacific Architecture.

57 Tuck S. (2008). Labour of love, Macau Business, Vol. 53, pp32-33.

other places such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Macau government had tried to resolve this problem by amending the casino working age from 18 to 21, and there should be further promotion in high school to encourage students to continue their studies and for better future.

Macau’s heavy reliance on expatriate labor is a stop gap measure to solve the skills shortage and should not be relied upon as a long-term solution⁴⁵⁸. Therefore, it is important for the government to encourage companies to make positive moves such as offering training and promotion opportunities for locals so as to make them qualified for higher positions. Moreover, a control on imported labor in guaranteeing jobs for locals is also essential.

Furthermore, there is a need for Macau’s local school to focus more on language training. Comparing with other international tourism destination such as Hong Kong and Singapore, Macau’s overall proficiency in English is lower. In order to become an international city, it is vital for the government to promote the usage of English as a foreign language.

58 Tuck S. (2008). Labour of love, Macau Business, Vol. 53, pp32-33.

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Appendix I: Statistical result by SPSS

Regression model between numbers of hotel to sustainable tourism factors 1. Number of hotel & guesthouses to Social factor

a) Unemployment rate (S1)

Regression: Summary

Independent variable: Unemployment rate R Square Sig B t

Dependent variable: Number of hotels & guesthouses ^0.863 0.000 21.697 -9.945 -0.227

The result shows that each increase in number of hotels & guesthouse have a decrease in unemployment rate by 0.227 units. 86.3% variation of unemployment rate can be explained by the number of hotels &

guesthouses. The answer is significant since sig value is 0.000 and t-test shows that it is outside + 1.96.

b) Crime Cases (S2)

Independent variable: Crime Cases R Square Sig B t

Dependent variable: Number of hotels & guesthouses 0.743 0.000 -2,462.315 9.920 68.990

By using regression method, it shows the relationship between crime cases to the number of hotel. R square is 74.3% which means that 74.3% variation of Crime cases can be explained by the number of hotels &

guesthouses. Its regression equation is upward sloping since 68.99 is positive number, each unit increase in number of hotels & guesthouses means 68.99 units increase in crime cases. The result is significant as sig value is 0.00 which is highly significant and the t-test is above + 1.96 also means this result is significant.

c) Imported Labor (S3)

Independent variable: Imported labor R Square Sig B t

Dependent variable: Number of hotels & guesthouses ^0.866 0.000 -283,823.56 14.803 4,429.027

The relationship of the imported labor and number of hotels & guesthouses is highly significant, which the t-test is much higher than 1.96 and sig value is 0.00. 86.6% variation of imported labor can be explained by the number of hotels & guesthouses. It shows that each increase in one unit of number of hotels and guesthouse have an upward sloping by 4429 units increase in imported labor.

2. Number of hotel & guesthouses to Economical factor

The result of the entire three economic factors is also highly significant; all of them which are CPI, GDP, inflation rate and average wages of hotel staff can be represented by the increase of number of hotels and

guesthouses. The R square ranged from 76.7% to 83.5% and all of them are upward sloping. Every increase in unit of hotels & guesthouses shows an increase on the economical factor by 0.655 to 1307.825.

Regression: Summary

Independent variable: CPI (C1) R Square Sig B t

Dependent variable: Number of hotels & guesthouses ^0.835 0.000 2.187 13.136 1.403

Independent variable: Hotel staff average income (C2) R Square Sig B t Dependent variable: Number of hotels & guesthouses ^0.822 0.000 -4,781.838 12.545

127.386

Independent variable: Inflation rate (C3) R Square Sig B t

Dependent variable: Number of hotels & guesthouses ^0.799 0.000 -46.522 11.612 0.655

Independent variable: GDP (C4) R Square Sig B t

Dependent variable: Number of hotels & guesthouses ^0.767 0.000 -75,909.555 10.581 1,307.825

3. Number of hotel & guesthouses to Environmental factor a) Electricity consumption (E1)

Independent variable: Electricity consumption R Square Sig B t

Dependent variable: Number of hotels & guesthouses ^0.594 ^0.000 -1,345.067 7.058 25.438

The electricity consumption also has positive relationship with the increase number of hotels & guesthouse.

Each increase number of hotels & guesthouse has an increase unit of electricity consumption by 25.438.

59.4% can be represented by the variation of the number of hotels & guesthouse to the electricity consumption. The result is highly significant in which the sig value is 0.000 and t-test show 7.058 (much higher than 1.96).

a) Air pollution (no relationship) (E2)

Independent variable: Air pollution R Square Sig B t

Dependent variable: Number of hotels & guesthouses ^0.004 ^0.731 ^36.657 ^0.347 0.136

The regression between air pollution and number of hotels & guesthouses is not significant which t-test shows it is inside the range of + 1.96. Sig value is 0.731 which is larger than 0.05 and it is not significant and not representative. Therefore, we could understand that the number of hotels and guesthouses has no

relationship with air pollution and we have to accept the null hypothesis, which it needs further research on this topic.

b) Noise pollution (E3)

Regression: Summary

Independent variable: Noise pollution R Square Sig B t

Dependent variable: Number of hotels & guesthouses ^0.692 ^0.000 ^-133.861 ^8.739 2.089

The noise pollution problem also got a positive relationship which means an increase in number of hotels &

guesthouses will have 2.089 unit increases in noise pollution. The result is significant which the sig value is 0.000 and t-test is much higher than 1.96. R square is 69.2% which means variation of noise pollution can be explained by number of hotels & guesthouses.

Appendix II: Statistical result by SPSS

Correlation and Multiple Regression model between hotel statistics⁵⁹ to sustainable tourism factors a) Correlation between hotel statistics, number of hotels and sustainable tourism factors

59 Hotel statistic includes length of stay, number of visitor’s arrival and in house guests.

Unemploy ment reate

Crime cases

Imported labor

Electricity consumpti

on Air pollution

Noise pollution CPI

Inflation rate GDP

Hotel staff average

income In house

guest No. of visitors arrival

Length of stay

Hotel number Pearson

Correlation 1 -0.878 -0.836 -0.758 -0.141 -0.894 -0.743 -0.952 -0.951 -0.847 -0.930 -0.970 -0.147 -0.863 Sig. (2-tailed) 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.411 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.392 0.000