USJ and Tourcon B2B Platform Co-create a New Smart Culture and Tourism Ecosystem
USJ and Tourcon B2B Platform Co-create a New Smart Culture and Tourism Ecosystem
15
Dec
15/12/2025
The University of Saint Joseph’s (USJ) Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEAS) and Tourcon B2B Platform have signed a Memorandum on 10 December.
The University of Saint Joseph’s (USJ) Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEAS) and Tourcon B2B Platform have signed a Memorandum on 10 December 2025, to jointly promote data integration and artificial intelligence (AI) innovation across Macao’s cultural and tourism sectors. The signing of the MoU marks an important step toward strengthening the city’s digital capabilities and enhancing its competitiveness as an international tourism hub. Under the partnership, both sides will collaborate on data analytics, AI-driven product development and smart tourism applications.
The initiative aims to address long-standing issues such as fragmented data, limited digital resources within the industry, and the need for more efficient cross-border tourism services. The cooperation will support tourism supply chain insights, policy decision-making, and scenario-based smart tourism applications, helping Macao improve the quality of inbound and outbound travel and deepen tourism cooperation within the Greater Bay Area.
Director of Tourcon B2B Platform, Ms Phoebe Cao, highlighted that despite the progress brought by the Macao–Hengqin integration policy, the local industry still struggles with data silos and scattered information systems. She stressed that this collaboration fills a critical gap and will enhance the industry’s “soft power” by enabling businesses to adopt AI-driven tools and data-based decision-making. Ms Cao also shared the latest development metrics of Tourcon B2B Platform and she further outlined the platform’s three future development priorities: 1) AI-based multilingual smart customer service with cultural understanding for travellers and cross-border buyers; 2) Macao Tourism Supply Chain White Paper and a risk-alert dashboard offering market forecasts and decision-making support;
3) An open AI ecosystem (PaaS) supporting MICE innovation, smart navigation services and multilingual cultural-tourism content generation.
Prof. George Du, Dean of USJ’s IDEAS, noted that enterprises alone often lack the capacity to achieve full digital transformation. He emphasised that the partnership will integrate academic research strengths – such as machine learning, multimodal models, traveller behaviour prediction and intelligent
recommendation algorithms – with Tourcon’s market-oriented platform. This collaboration will not only enhance short-term technical capabilities but also build long-term technological advantages, helping the industry prevent “technology homogenisation” and develop differentiated tourism services. Prof. Du added that advanced algorithms, including few-shot learning, causal inference and explainable AI, can be applied to optimise the tourism supply chain and create personalised itineraries, intelligent matching systems and cross-border tourism product recommendations. These innovations will accelerate Macao’s development into a model city for global smart tourism.
