MACAO, March 1 (Xinhua) -- The number of Macao's Meeting, Incentive, Conference and Exhibition (MICE) events went up by 46 year-on-year to 1,427 in 2018, as participants and attendees reached 2.12 million, up by 11.6 percent, the special administrative region (SAR)'s statistic service said on Friday.
The latest report from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that the participants of meetings and conferences totalled 296,000, up by 20.5 percent year-on-year. The average duration of the meetings and conferences went down by 0.2 day year-on-year to 1.4 days, whereas total floor area used expanded by 40.5 percent to 1,698,000 square meters.
The number of exhibition attendees rose by 10.0 percent year-on-year to 1,769,000 in 2018, with 1,486,000 attendees recorded in the 53 exhibitions organized by non-government organizations. The average duration of the exhibitions remained the same year-on-year, at 3.4 days, and the floor area increased by 15.2 percent to 347,000 square meters.
The incentives attracted 56,000 participants, an increase of 17.7 percent year-on-year. Their average duration dropped by 0.5 day to 2.6 days, whereas total floor area used rose by 13.5 percent to 388,000 square meters.
In 2018, there were 5,618 exhibitors participating in the exhibitions, with 25.4 percent of them coming from the mainland and 39.6 percent from Macao. Professional visitors totaled 98,000 and 54.1 percent of them were local visitors.
As regards the exhibitions organized by non-government organizations, there were 3,204 exhibitors and the majority of them were from Macao SAR (46.3 percent) and Hong Kong SAR (27.9 percent). These exhibitions attracted 77,000 professional visitors, most of whom were from Macao (58.7 percent).
According to the information provided by the 2,612 interviewed exhibitors, 97.7 percent of their revenue were generated from sales of products. Meanwhile, rental paid for exhibition booths, decoration and construction constituted 55.5 percent and 29.7 percent of their expenditure respectively.
