The Hong Kong tourism sector is worried that political and social tensions between Hongkongers and mainlanders will have a negative impact on inbound travel.
Chairman of the Hong Kong Inbound Tour Operators Association Ricky Tse confirmed that the number of scheduled tours from mainland China to Hong Kong for the Labour Day holidays are down by 30 percent compared to last year.
Tse believes that many mainlanders have been put off by the recent confrontations between parallel traders and protesters.
“If anything happened to tour members, the agencies would have to take responsibility,” he told the SCMP.
On the other hand, the Hong Kong Immigration Department anticipates that the number of people crossing our borders will increase by 15 percent during the break.
However, they did say that the majority will be Hongkongers, so you can’t really count them as tourists. Nice try though.
Hotels Association chairman Victor Chan is confident tourism will rebound. He said that 70 percent of all hotel rooms for May 1 and 2 have already been booked – same as last year – and that more last-minute reservations are likely.
However, he did not specify whether or not the reservations had been made by mainland visitors.
The number of visitors to Hong Kong, and subsequent consumer spending, was markedly down during the Easter and Ching Ming holidays.
However, this might not be entirely be because of the plethora of mainland-hating protests we’ve seen of late.
Hong Kong is becoming a less attractive travel destination for mainland Chinese people in general, as they now have more options for flying to other mainland cities and overseas destinations.
In response, the Hong Kong government has geared up promotional efforts to entice would-be mainland visitors.
Will it work? Only the queues outside Louis Vuitton will tell.
