Entering into the illegal inn

Alexandra Lages

When I was a college student, I visited Rome. I had learned from one of my friends, who was touring the Italian city for the second or third time, that the best and cheapest way to find a place to stay was to look for rooms advertised inside the train station, where people offered accommodation in illegal inns.
After trying the youth hostel near the station, and finding it fully booked, we were left with no other choice but to return to the train station and make a deal with one of those people. The stay went OK.
In Macau, illegal inns started to emerge at the same pace as the growth of the tourism industry and became a knotty problem. For a long time, lawmakers called for a new law that could empower the Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) to fight the phenomenon that, according to them, has often been used to house illegal immigrants and prostitutes and human trafficking activities.
Macau enjoys a stable security situation, but a number of serious crimes including rape, murder and robbery have been committed in such illegal accommodation. Finally, a new law on “Prohibition of Providing Illegal Accommodation” came out and it’s been in force since mid-August.
In the first two weeks after the law's enactment, the Government’s special taskforce sealed an astonishing number of 32 apartments discovered to the taskforce checked. However, despite detaining 280 occupants, among them there were only five overstayers and one illegal immigrant.
I presume that many foreigners who stay in these rooms are actually immigrants looking for a job in Macau. Indeed, there should be a strict control.
However, when I look back on my experience in Rome, I see that it could also be possible that what Macau’s accommodation industry is offering is not meeting the demand of backpackers and budget travellers. For that reason, the Government could take advantage of powers given by the new law and find out who these illegal inns guests are and why they chose to stay in this kind of accommodation.
To the contrary, it looks like the Government is not interested in discovering the answer to these questions.
Recent comments from MGTO and the Macau Hotel Association given to the Macau Daily Times, said that the 2-star guesthouses’ occupancy still has room to improve. But it is wrong to assume that budget travellers are looking for 2-stars guesthouses and hotels, especially when we know that the services provided by some of them do not meet the required standards.
Instead, they seek youth hostels, low-budget guesthouses suitable for families, hotel boutiques, etc. If you visit other regional destinations, it’s easy to find such accommodations.
In truth, Macau is striving to be recognised as a quality tourism destination. But if you look to Singapore, there is accommodation available for a wide range of tourists' needs, including budget hotels and guesthouses.
Why should Macau be different? Should we just ignore the phenomenon and proceed with these operations unthinkingly? Are Macau’s doors only open to wealthy tourists?
Macau is a tourism city and to study the problem of illegal inns from its root should be taken into consideration. Nevertheless, on Tuesday, MGTO’s deputy director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes downplayed any conclusions that could be taken from the results of the operations against illegal inns.
She explained that’s just a matter of time. Let’s hope so.