Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) has appointed a new representative office to promote the city in India. MGTO Director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes signed today (20) a contract with the newly appointed General Manager of MGTO representative office in India, Arzan Khambatta.

Following a new representative recruitment launched in 2014, MGTO selected VFS Global to carry on the work of promoting Macau in India. The contract is effective from January 2015.

On January 28, MGTO will hold an inauguration in New Delhi to announce to Indian travel trade and media the new representative office for Macau along with the promotional activities planned for India. MGTO Deputy Director Cecilia Tse will be at the Indian capital to chair the inauguration, which is will be held on the eve of the opening of India’s major travel and tourism trade exhibition SATTE, running January 29 to 31, where MGTO will also promote Macau.

MGTO first opened a representative office in India in 2002. Throughout the years, MGTO has been rolling out promotional activities in India, including multi-destination promotions with Hong Kong, while at the same time it has benefited from the attention brought by high profile Bollywood events hosted in the city, which all together have contributed to increase the interest among Indians to visit Macau.

India is one of the most important potential international source markets for Macau. Following double-digit growth in previous years, the number of visitor arrivals from India has kept a good performance in 2014, totaling more than 167 thousand for the whole year, up by 4.5 per cent year-on-year, among which 80.1 per cent of visitors stayed overnight in Macau, 3.1 per cent more compare to the previous year, according with preliminary figures.