Mike Rowse

Opinion | Will new pandas boost Hong Kong tourism? It’s not black and white

If Hong Kong is to return to pre-pandemic levels of visitors, it must go beyond pandas and seek out bona fide mega events

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The panda twins are seen at Ocean Park on August 15. The pair, a female and a male, are cubs of Ying Ying and Le Le, pandas given as a gift by the central government to Hong Kong in 2007. Photo: Ocean Park Hong Kong via AP

Mike Rowse

Published: 4:30pm, 25 Aug 2024

I’m not trying to be a party pooper, but it’s time to calmly consider the implications of the birth at Ocean Park of panda twins. In all the excitement, some have made rather exaggerated claims. For example, welcome though the births are, they are not going to dramatically boost tourist numbers. And talk of a “panda economy” is, frankly, fantasy.

Let’s start with the good news. Any panda birth is a triumph as natural breeding attempts are apparently infrequent. Artificial insemination has been used to preserve the species but, despite this success, it is still relatively rare.

According to Suzanne Gendron, retired executive director of zoological operations at Ocean Park, the fetus is sometimes absorbed by the mother rather than being brought to term. It follows that twins are even rarer and, in the wild, one of the cubs is easily lost as the mother has only enough milk to nurse one.

What makes the recent Hong Kong births even more remarkable is that both Ying Ying and Le Le are a bit long in the tooth – the former is thought to be the oldest female to give birth, at one day shy of her 19th birthday, equivalent to 57 for a human. The twins are being fed with their mother’s milk supplemented by additional supplies from the panda research centre in Sichuan province.

Two more adults are being gifted to the city next month by the central government. If both twins survive the next three critical months, Hong Kong will then have six pandas. That is very exciting, and I would imagine many Hong Kong residents would visit Ocean Park to see them.

What will be the impact on tourism? The first thing to take into account is that many other places have pandas in their zoos under arrangements reached with the central government and Sichuan authorities. They include countries spread across western Europe, East and Southeast Asia and the Americas, as well as Qatar and Russia.