Macau mulls 144-hour visa-free travel for surrounding Guangdong province

City authorities hope that more travelers would get more out of their visits to Macau; initiative part of a wider tourism plan that also covers other industries.

Original story by GGRAsia

The Macau authorities have proposed talks with their mainland China counterparts about a “144-hours visa-free transit” programme understood to be targeted particularly at foreign travelers wishing to move around within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, but who would otherwise need a visa for Guangdong.

The Macau side said a key aim was to help Macau’s “tourism and integrated leisure” sector, a term usually understood to refer to the city’s gaming operators and their hospitality businesses. The Macau government has already asked its six casino concessionaires to work on bringing in more overseas customers, as part of conditions for the new 10-year licenses issued in January.

The 144-hours visa-free transit idea is one of a number of proposals in a document called the “Development Plan for Appropriate Economic Diversification of the Macao Special Administrative Region (2024-2028)”. It was released to the public on Friday (August 4), and is subject to a 30-day public consultation. The government has also been consulting other people and organizations it regards as likely to have useful input.

The plan covers: tourism and integrated leisure business; the fields of finance, technology and healthcare; the meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) business; and cultural and sports events.

The Macau government has a stated policy of diversifying the city’s economy from its reliance on the gaming industry. It has aimed to see the economic value from Macau’s non-gaming sector reach “60 percent” of Macau’s gross domestic product by 2028, according to the information in the document, which has been issued in Chinese and Portuguese, Macau’s two official languages.

In it, the Macau authorities said they would work with their mainland China counterparts to promote the model of “one trip, multiple destinations” for foreign travelers.

The city would “work with the [Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau] Greater Bay cities to create tourism, cultural and sports events, and discuss the improvement of [a] ‘144-hours visa-free transit’ policy”, the public-consultation text said.

It also mentioned that any “improvement” to the 144 hours visa-free policy – that might arise from the various discussions including the public consultation – would then be “proposed to the relevant government departments on the mainland.”

To learn more about the the history of the policies leading up to the 144-hours visa-free transit, and how it could further revitalize travel in Macau, read the original article by GGRAsia at https://www.ggrasia.com/macau-moots-visa-freedom-for-those-also-visiting-guangdong/