Hotel advertisements give tourists the first impression about the hotels. Aiming to become the world tourism and leisure center, Macao has been developing its tourism industry enthusiastically over the last decade. Large casino resort hotels of foreign investment have become the key attraction sites in Macao for tourists to visit, as well as the venues for local people to spend their leisure time. It is worthwhile to examine how the written advertisements originated from the foreign-funded hotels produced in English are translated into Chinese and adopted in Macao for Chinese readers. This study collects opinions from potential readers on the selected hotel advertisements and translations through user survey, and examines the advertisement persuasiveness and translation effectiveness in terms of the four elements of the AIDA principle, information sufficiency and language quality. A sample of 20 hotel advertisement source texts (ST) and the respective target texts (TT) are collected from the hotels’ official websites. Each ST and TT receives scores and comments from a total number of 25 potential readers. Based on the scores obtained, the persuasiveness of the ST and TT is carefully examined, and the possible factors influencing the translation effectiveness are discussed. It is found that the overall persuasiveness of the TT is slightly lower than that of the ST, and the greatest score difference occurs in the aspect of language quality. Although communicative translation is the most frequently used translation strategy, it does not always lead to effective translations, mainly due to the inappropriate use of translation methods. In addition, it is discovered that detailed information, high language quality, the use of four-character expressions, and wording that is familiar to TT readers tend to contribute to effective translations of hotel advertisements.