Hong Kong tourism figures pick up after grim March, but there's little to cheer
Things have picked up since a grim March, but arrivals are down on last year, hotel room rates are sliding and retailers say the outlook is bleak
Is the winter chill over for Hong Kong's tourism industry? The signals so far have been mixed as the tourism and hospitality sector says business over the Labour Day weekend will be a challenge but not as grim as in March.
The Travel Industry Council reports that about 260 tour groups will visit the city during the three-day break starting today, a drop of 10 per cent from the same period last year. There is also a single-digit drop in room rates, according to the Hong Kong Hotels Association.
But business has improved significantly since March, when the number of group tours arriving plunged 36 per cent compared with a year earlier, the council's chairman, Michael Wu Siu-ieng, said. The decrease was a smaller 10 per cent last month, thanks to a rebound in the second half of the month, he added.
Visitor arrivals overall in March dropped 8.7 per cent year-on-year and hotel occupancy slumped by 9 per cent.
Wu said it was unlikely there would be any year-on-year growth in tour numbers in the rest of the year, but he expected the drop to narrow further by the summer to 5 per cent.
He said Labour Day was no longer a peak period for mainland tourists to visit Hong Kong, as they preferred to use longer holidays to venture overseas. The speed of recovery for the tourism sector would depend on currency exchange rates and promotions by retailers, he added.
Victor Chan Kok-wai, chairman of the Hotel Association, said occupancy rates during the Labour Day holiday would exceed 90 per cent, similar to last year. Although there continues to be a single-digit drop in room rates, it is smaller than last month's 10 to 15 per cent drop.
