A rise in the number of Vietnamese visitors to Macao, a special administrative region of China, in recent years, has prompted MGTO to pay attention to Vietnam as well as focus on its efforts on the development of the market, Auntunes said at a press conference on Jan. 14.

Despite the global financial crisis, Macao, saw its visitor arrivals surpass the 30 million mark for the whole of 2008, registering an increase of 11 percent over 2007, Xinhua news agency said.

The Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan continued to be the three largest visitor source markets last year, with the visitor arrivals from the mainland rising by 17 percent to 17.5 million, MGTO director Auntunes was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

The top ten visitor generating markets are mainly from Asia, of which arrivals from Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Japan and Malaysia grew 81 percent, 41 percent, 30 percent, 24 percent, 23 percent and 12 percent respectively, the figures showed.