Hong Kong cable car attraction at 95% of pre-pandemic heights as Southeast Asian tourists return, but long-haul traffic remains slow
- But Ngong Ping 360 managing director James Tung says European and North American visitors still to get back to numbers seen before coronavirus hit
- He says he is confident number of long-haul tourists will climb as flight capacity continues to grow
But James Tung Pui-chen, Ngong Ping 360’s new managing director, said European and North American visitors had still to return to the levels logged before the coronavirus hit.
“Customers from long-distance countries in Europe and the United States are still lagging behind,” Tung said in his first interview since he took over the role in April.
“This is mainly due to the slow recovery of [long-haul] flight capacity to Hong Kong, which has made recovery in these markets relatively slow.”
Tung did not reveal the total number of long-haul visitors to the attraction from January to mid-May, but said they amounted to about 15 per cent of traffic over the period.
Long-haul visitors made up 22 per cent of customers over the same time frame in pre-pandemic 2018.
Tung, a veteran of the tourism industry with two decades of experience, has worked with K11 Concepts, Hong Kong Disneyland, the Tourism Board, Australian airline Qantas and the city’s now-closed Cathay Dragon airline when it was called Dragonair.
He added that he was confident that long-haul customers would return as flight capacity continued to grow.
Tung said that daily visitor numbers between January and mid-May were up 40 per cent year on year, buoyed by the Southeast Asian factor.
Visitors from the Philippines had seen the strongest growth at 107 per cent and the number of passengers from Thailand had surpassed the figure recorded in 2018 by 15 per cent, he said.
“The Philippines has now become one of our most important markets in Asia,” Tung said.
Tourism Board statistics show the Philippines was the city’s top recovered market for visitors last year at about 85 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
The city welcomed 264,239 Filipino tourists in the first quarter of 2024, up 135 per cent on the numbers from the same period six years ago.
Tung said tourists from the Philippines had traditionally focused on the city’s theme parks, but might now be looking for a wider range of entertainment options.
Visitor spending on tickets was also strong, with the number recorded from January to April up 27 per cent year on year, Tung said.
The figure also represented a 32 per cent increase from 2018.
Tung said “upselling” of its premium Crystal Cabins, which feature glass floors, and the newest Crystal+ service introduced in December 2022 with transparent floors and walls, had contributed to the growth.
Ngong Ping 360 increased its ticket prices by about 15 per cent last October, but Tung said there were no plans at the moment for more increases.
He added 10 more Crystal+ cabins will join the fleet from December this year, bringing the number in service to 20.
A round trip between Tung Chung and Ngong Ping in a Crystal+ cabin costs HK$350 per adult, almost 30 per cent higher than the cost of a seat in a standard one.
The attraction will also launch Doraemon-themed cabins and premium gifts in mid-June as part of the blue-and-white robot cat’s “100% Doraemon & Friends” exhibition in Hong Kong.
Ronald Wu Keng-hou, the executive director of Gray Line Tours and a Tourism Board member, said visitors from Thailand enjoyed touring the city’s Buddhist temples, which helped drive interest in trips to Hong Kong from the country.
“They may go to six or seven temples per trip … Che Kung, Wong Tai Sin, you name it,” he added.
Wu said flights from the city to Thailand and the Philippines had recovered well as there was a variety of “non-traditional airlines” such as AirAsia that had managed to win back capacity quickly.
