Macau, China, July 7, 2026 (Lusa) - The Macau government has begun seeking residents’ views on easing administrative licensing restrictions on saunas and beauty salons.
The acting director of the Legal Affairs Bureau (DSAJ) said that the proposal means that saunas are exempt from registration, authorisation, or a licence to operate, provided they do not offer massage services.
Ng Chi Kin noted that this is a simplification process for activities that “do not affect public order and safety, or whose risks can already be effectively controlled through existing regulatory mechanisms”.
“We are not talking about a lack of control,” the official emphasised at a press conference to launch the public consultation, which will run until 19 August.
Ng acknowledged that the change may have limited effects, given that “there are currently no establishments [in Macau] dedicated exclusively to the operation of saunas”.
“Although some establishments call themselves ‘saunas’ or ‘spas’, in practice, their main activity remains massage, with the sauna facilities playing a secondary role,” explained the acting director of the DSAJ.
Ng added that, in practice, sauna services “may simply consist of facilities, without anyone providing any services”.
Meanwhile, Macau’s approximately 900 beauty salons will now be permitted to offer massages, provided they are performed by practitioners of the same gender as the clients and are exclusively for clients of a single sex.
Ng emphasised that the aim is to clarify “a grey area that is not regulated”: massages involving “physical contact with the client, but which are more akin to cosmetic services”.
Beauty salons will enjoy unrestricted opening hours and will only need to register their activity to start business.
“It will be easier to start up [a business], but we will step up supervision once operations have begun,” Ng said.
Procedures, however, will remain similar for Macau’s 87 massage establishments, which will still require authorisation to begin operating.
Massage parlours will continue to “comply with current legislation”, namely by offering only services permitted by law, including those of a non-sexual nature, Ng emphasised.
The proposal aims to revise the administrative licensing regime for specific economic activities, approved in 1998 whilst Macau was still under Portuguese administration.
On 1 January 2017, Macau held a public consultation on the revision of this system, but the matter ultimately came to nothing. The proposal provided that a licence would no longer be required for localised massage services.
At the time, the then deputy director of the DSAJ, Carmen Maria Chung, acknowledged that “there are certain establishments that take advantage of the situation to provide other types of services prohibited by law”, of a sexual nature.
The law in Macau protects public spaces by prohibiting the exploitation of prostitution, pimping, and solicitation “in a public place or a place accessible to the public” for the purpose of prostitution.
The authorities targeted the practice of prostitution in massage parlours in a crackdown in June, and the Macau police arrested 26 people, including three serving police officers, on suspicion of involvement in an organised prostitution ring operating in saunas and massage parlours.
VQ/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
