Business Tourism
Business tourism is consolidated in the city, which welcomes businessmen and offshore industry workers every day. Macaé has the largest hotel network in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state, with about four thousand beds, in approximately 100 hotels and inns. Business tourism, which grows from 6% to 9% a year, is responsible for 71% of the tourism activity and 10% of Macaé’s GDP.
In 2008, a group of businessmen and merchants founded Associação Empresarial e Turística de Macaé, also known as Macaé Convention Visitors Bureau (Macaé CVB), which goal is to bring even more development to tourism, due to the city’s diverse gastronomy.
Macaé CVB promotes initiatives for the development of leisure and business tourism in the city. Some of them are: the official local tourism guide, the foundation of Gastronomic Area in Praia dos Cavaleiros and events that, today, are part of the official city calendar, such as Festival Macaé de Cultura e Gastronomia and Feira Internacional de Artesanato (INTERART/Macaé).
The current infrastructure of the city, with Centro de Convenções Jornalista Roberto Marinho (Macaé Centro), the hotel and gastronomy network, the airport and its regular flights and the road link with the main cities in Southeast Region of Brazil helps improving tourism in Macaé.
Every two years, Macaé Centro hosts the third largest offshore fair of the world, Brasil Offshore - International Oil and Gas Industry Fair and Conference. The event is held in Macaé because the city is the operating base and responsible for more than 80% of Brazil offshore exploration. In 2013, there were more than 51,000 visitors and 700 exhibitors, which 155 were foreigners.
The city hosts national and international events. Macaé is one of the four pre-selected cities in Rio de Janeiro by 2014 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee as potential candidates for Team Base Camps, before and during the competition.
Hotel network
According to Convention Visitors Bureau, Macaé has 84 hotels and inns. There are 4,100 excellent comfortable rooms with electronic connection, most of them are from national and international hotel chains.
The network has about 10,000 beds for accommodation. The larger hotels are located in Cavaleiros, Praia Campista and Imbetiba. The average occupancy rate is higger than 80% during all weeks and reaches 100% from Monday to Thursday.
These numbers are due mainly to the oil and gas productive chain, but also to thermal power, construction and trade in goods and services. There are five new hotels being built until the end of 2014, which will provide about 500 new rooms, increasing drastically the current network capacity.