On October 25, 2025, Professor Glenn McCartney from the Department of Integrated Resort and Tourism Management of the University of Macau (UM) led a group of postgraduate students from the MSc in International Integrated Resort Management to the Macau Grand Prix Museum. Through an immersive visit combined with featured research and discussion activities, the students embarked on a study tour that integrated sport and event tourism with tourism management practice, helping them to connect academic perspectives with real-world scenarios.
The Macau Grand Prix Museum is a key venue documenting the over 60-year development history of the Macau Grand Prix an iconic event in Macau’s cultural and tourism industry. The museum houses dozens of classic racing cars and motorcycles that once competed on the Guia Circuit, along with storytelling, interactive technologies, trophies, posters, and video materials from previous races. It not only bears the profound connection between Macau and motorsport but also provides high-quality research samples for tourism management students to integrate theory with practice. During the visit Prof. McCartney provided a few novel and realistic research activities for the students to complete during the visit.
During the activity, the UM postgraduate team were also guided by the museum’s professional tour guides. They systematically learned about the origin and development of the Macau Grand Prix, observed the design differences and technological innovations of racing cars from different eras up close, listening to introductions about the unique challenges of the Guia “street circuit,” and developments to the race over the years. Throughout the process, the students engaged in real-time discussions on professional topics such as how event and sport tourism is integrated within urban cultural tourism, including museum exhibition design and visitor experience optimization, and the sustainable development of cultural and tourism resources. This connection of theoretical knowledge learned in class such as tourism resource planning, the development on non-gaming, destination image and branding and visitor behavior could be shown in part through this visit. There were various interactive VR and race simulators where the students could race the Guia Circuit adding more fun to the visit but also showing the challenge of driving the circuit.
At the end of the activity, the UM postgraduate team expressed their sincere gratitude to the Macau Grand Prix Museum for its support. In the future, the Department of Integrated Resort and Tourism Management of UM will continue to leverage Macau’s rich cultural and tourism scenarios to build more outbound study platforms for students, to promote and demonstrate academic research in real-world contexts, and to engage with aspects related to the sustainable development of Macau’s cultural, sport, event, and tourism industry.
