Sharing Rights and Obligations

Sharing Rights and Obligations

Speech by Pansy Ho, Vice Chairman and Secretary-General, GTEF

First of all, I would like to salute to the leaders and guests present today, His Excellency Mr. Li Jinzao, Vice Minister of Culture and Tourism,Mr. Duan Qiang, Chairman of the World Tourism Alliance, and Mr. Zhu Shanzhong, Executive Director of the United Nations World Tourism Organization. I also see many of my friends attending the Xianghu Dialogue today. Mr. Henri Giscard d’Estaing is also here. And of course Mr. Du Jiang, my partner from the China Tourism Group.The WTA has provided this wonderful opportunity for us to share this moment together. I am honored to be here in Hangzhou, the new headquarters of the WTA.As far as I know, Hangzhou is also the innovation capital of China and the most frequently visited Chinese destination by overseas tourists. This is the second year for me to attend the dialogue. Once again, I would like to thank the organizers for their invitation and I look forward to furthering exchanges and cooperation with this very important organization of the tourism industry.

For me personally, the theme of this year’s event is highly relevant and timely. In 2000, the United Nations issued its Millennium Development Goals, which also included a chapter about tourism. We must be proud of our achievements. Today, the strength of the tourism industry not just lies in its strong growth, but is also fully testified. Even in the worst economic situation, and even in recession, the tourism sector is still creating millions of jobs, more than any other industry, and taking many regions out of poverty. It is therefore an industry that delivers benefits to the world.

If we turn the clock back to 2000, we see another picture of development. For Macao, my hometown, foreign direct investment has increased by 800% since its return to the motherland in 1999. Together with the government, we have made a long-term investment in Macao, hoping to create the miracle of Macao. This year, we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Macao Special Administrative Region. Let me share with you some of the figures we have. For example, from the year of Macao’s return to today, the number of tourist arrivals has increased fivefold. The population of Macao is only 670,000, and our land area is less than 33km, but the number of tourist arrivals is now 36 million, and is estimated to reach 80 million by the end of this year. Of course, there are also questions we have to ask ourselves, such as whether the current growth can be sustained, whether we can adapt to even quicker development, and how the industry will transform, whether we should continue to invest or build more infrastructure to meet the current needs, or whether the current investment direction is correct. What I’m going to talk about today is some of my personal experience, which will also give you an idea about the kind of investment Macao is making in its future.

We see that many emerging destinations, like us, are investing in their capacity, including infrastructure, such as airports, hotels, department stores and other facilities mentioned by the Chairman just now. Like all other cities,our land and resources are limited, and there is a competition among different sectors of the economy for these resources. In this case, we must continue to invest, but we must invest in a different way. We must diversify our investment, and we should stop blindly pursuing quantitative and double-digit growth. In fact, in the past couple of years, the government and all the stakeholders of the industry have been working together to re-create our identity and re-position our city, in order to enrich our tourism heritage, give us greater leverage in a bigger market, and make our tourism products more diversified. We also want to bring up a new generation of talents, ready to deal with future challenges of the industry.

In short, high-quality development should be our goal in the next stage. It should be clear to us that every destination is a unique place. They must be able to demonstrate their unique advantages and core values, so as to bring to the visitors a truly meaningful experience. For us, we take as our mission to make Macao a unique place in the development of art, food and exhibition industries. To be honest, Macao’s cultural projects are not worthy of visit to many tourists coming to the city, and this is something I am very devoted to. Since 2013, I have been leading with full passion a permanent MGM Macao Art Museum project, called Art Space. The museum provides visitors with interactive art and cultural projects all year long. It is open to the public,and brings them a very original and interactive experience. Artists are not only painting, making sculpture, or putting up exhibitions. In fact, they can bring us a lot of art installations. Through the works displayed in their gallery, they can show us the other face of Macao, a very charming face of the city. It is hoped that through this little project, we can create some real cultural heritage for a tourism destination like Macao. What we have achieved so far is a huge success.

There is a great opportunity to show our own historical heritage,and bring a truly meaningful and impressive travel experience to our visitors.In the past seven years, we have demonstrated that art and travel can be seamlessly connected to create the best experience for our tourists. We have delivered the best artistic travel experience tailor-made for each and every tourist. In addition, we have also taken the works of the most popular and most respected art masters in the world to Macao and showed them to our visitors.This year has been a very exciting year, because inspired by our efforts, the Macao government has organized the first Art Macao, a six-month-long art and cultural event. There are various forms of art exhibitions organized all over Macao. I am delighted to have created the Art Space and played a part in such a wonderful project. It proves that all stakeholders, including major investors, companies and the government, are able to host art exhibitions, and present tourism in these very artistic and elegant ways.

Another area of investment is gourmet, which has always played a very important role in Macao’s tourism. Recently, it has taken an even more important position in Macao. Usually, we see that tourists spend one quarter of their travel budget on food and restaurants. We see that Macao has more than 400years of food history. Gourmet food is a very important part of Macao’s historical heritage, and also one of the things we can proudly present to our visitors.Macao is one of the UNESCO’s Cities of Gastronomy. It now has 19 Michelin-starred restaurants, overtaking Switzerland to be the place with the largest number of Michelin-starred restaurants in the world. We have achieved a big success,which has translated into rapid growth. Combining cultural traditions, natural environment and gourmet food creates amazing results. We can see that Macao is making continued progress in this respect.

In the past, even a hotel could only offer a limited choice of cuisine,maybe just a cafe, a local food restaurant and a steak house. But when you go to Macao today, you will find this is no longer the case. For example, there are three world’s top chefs in MGM . Each of them has their own signature dishes. Now we are building a new hotel, which will take this challenge to a whole new level. There are 30 restaurants in the hotel, offering a variety of internationally renowned cuisines to our guests. You can see this is becoming the prevailing trend. There is another key component of our long-term strategy,that is the exhibition industry. In 1999, when Macao was returned to China, there was almost no exhibition project in the city. At that time, I was planning to build the first exhibition venue in Macao, the Macao Tower. I wanted to turn it into a complex, including tourism, entertainment and catering facilities for tourists as well as space for exhibitions and shows. It was like the cradle of Macao’s exhibition industry, and also paved the way for the development of the exhibition business. At that time, it was also a good training facility for us and the venue for many important activities. So the idea of starting the exhibition business is very important. Actually, hardware facilities are only of secondary importance. A mature and competitive eco-environment is essential for the industry to work. We also have the support of the government and a very efficient logistics team. Our competitors and stakeholders have also helped us improve our software. So we have not just built the hardware, the GTEF. In the founding and development of the GTEF, we have received the support of many colleagues here in the past few years. Now, we have 150 representatives from all over the world in the GTEF, including representatives from Chinese provinces and cities. They meet in Macao to communicate with top leaders in the tourism industry, and share their experience and insights in the tourism and leisure business. The development of the tourism economy has also benefited our employees. As professionals and through on-the-job training, they have been constantly exposed to the international environment. There is no single solution to our future transition, and the most important thing is to involve all the stakeholders in the society.

It’s not just Macao’s success. Not all those who play games well are game players. It’s a very radical idea. In fact, we need to build a very good relationship with all stakeholders, including the government, industry and people from all sectors, to develop the tourism economy together, and constantly raise our sense of responsibility. This is the only way to achieve long-term and sustainable development. Education and community investment is also a very important aspect. Tourism is all about human. We need to follow a people-centered approach, and keep all the main stakeholders, be it business,education sector or government departments, closely connected. Therefore, young people, students and workers should be encouraged to enjoy all aspects of tourism and its related culture. Tourism is an industry with great potential, so it is also important to cultivate talents. Tourism also holds great appeal. In fact, the development of tourism is beyond our imagination. We hope to learn more from you, especially the keynote speakers. I appreciate the opportunity to bring us all here to Hangzhou. I hope I can learn advanced technologies here,technology that can make me better prepared for the digital future and the development of intelligent tourism.

Thank you!

原标题：《Sharing Rights and Obligations》