China's facilitated individual travel (FIT) policy on Macao/Hong Kong-bound travels, which was initiated in August, is expected to prove its worth in the National Day vacation that falls in the first week of October, Joao Mannuel Costa Antunes, director of the Macao Tourist Office (MTO) said on Saturday.

The office foresaw an influx of some 120,000 tourists from the mainland during the week-long vacation, which will be the first long holiday to boost the tourism after the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in the mainland and Hong Kong inthe first half year.

Antunes said that the National Day travel stimulated by the FIT policy is estimated to see a 15 percent increase of tourists over the same period last year.

In order to ensure a smooth passenger flow at Macao's entry checkpoints, MTO and the tourist authority in neighboring Guangdong Province, which was designated by the central governmentto pilot the FIT policy along with Beijing and Shanghai, have jointly established an "early warning system" to direct the tourist flow.

Under the coordination, Macao will provide Guangdong with a daily update of data on the hotel reservation rate and tourist arrivals during the National Day vacation.

Antunes said that MTO will open a tourist consultation meeting at the beginning of October to solicit opinions from the tourist industry to evaluate Macao's overall tourist handling capacity, which faces the test of the golden week travel.

(Xinhua News Agency September 27, 2003)