Number of Hongkongers leaving city over Christmas holiday rose by 50%
Immigration data shows 905,035 local residents left Hong Kong on Christmas Day and Boxing Day of this year, compared with 599,083 last year
The holiday crowds showed no signs of dying down in Hong Kong on Saturday, with tens of thousands turning out for the city’s first pyrotechnics drone show, even as figures showed 50 per cent more residents left the city on December 25 and 26 than during the corresponding period last year.
Immigration Department data showed that 905,035 local residents left Hong Kong on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, a 50.7 per cent increase from the 599,083 who departed over the same period in 2023.
But the crowds were still big at Christmas markets in Stanley and the West Kowloon Cultural District on Saturday, while shoppers flocked to commercial areas such as Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay.
“Some people were worried before the holiday whether Hong Kong would become a dead city as many Hongkongers would travel during the break,” Simon Wong Kit-lung, chairman of the Quality Tourism Services Association, told a TV programme.
“Now you can clearly see that such fears have absolutely not materialised in the past few days. There are many Hongkongers travelling, but those who stay here are actually willing to spend and want to have fun.”
Wong, who is also executive director of restaurant chain LH Group, said that while business in the catering sector had increased by up to a fifth this month compared with November, overall receipts remained about 5 to 10 per cent lower than last December.
