Hong Kong logs 540,000 tourist trips in first 3 days of Lunar New Year break, but residents make 1.1 million outbound journeys
- Tourism industry representatives say mega events are a ‘great help’ in bringing in visitors
- More than 310,000 arrivals recorded on Tuesday with four-day holiday coming to an end
But residents took 1.1 million outbound trips over the same three-day period, twice the figure for arrivals. With the four-day holiday coming to an end, more than 310,000 arrivals were recorded on Tuesday as of 4pm.
Tourism industry representatives credited festive events as being huge draws for visitors, noting 183,674 mainland Chinese tourists arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday, when the city held its Lunar New Year fireworks display, compared with 102,154 the day before.
“This clearly shows mega events are a great help in bringing in tourists and having them stay longer,” Hong Kong Tourism Association executive director Timothy Chui Ting-pong said.
He said the number of tour groups arriving from the mainland for the holiday had already reached two-thirds of pre-Covid levels.
About 200 groups came to Hong Kong each day during the break, compared with 300 daily in 2017 and 2018, he told a radio programme.
Chui said hotels had also performed well with many reaching occupancy levels of 90 per cent, even those located in peripheral districts such as Tuen Mun and Tsuen Wan, and especially lower-priced ones.
Hong Kong Tourist Guesthouse United Association president Lee Ka-long told the programme that budget accommodation recorded occupancy rates of up to 95 per cent, with rooms costing HK$400 to HK$500 a night, less than pre-pandemic levels.
According to Immigration Department statistics, 543,722 inbound trips were recorded in the past three days, with mainland travellers accounting for 87 per cent of them. The figure was 75.8 per cent of the 716,976 incoming trips in 2019 before the pandemic, and slightly exceeded the 540,993 in 2018.
With Covid-related travel restrictions in place in 2021 and 2022, the numbers plummeted to about 200 for each year.
Economist Simon Lee Siu-po described the 76 per cent figure as “good but not that good”. He said while the number was a definite rebound from the last few years, tourism should have “returned to normal” by this point.
“We should be doing much better,” he said.
Lee said the city remained “too expensive” for many mainland and overseas tourists – particularly budget and middle-class travellers – and that other nearby destinations, such as Japan, provided better “value for money”.
“We suffer from fundamental high operating costs and a strong Hong Kong dollar, which discourages visitors from coming to the city,” he said.
As of 4pm on Tuesday, more than 593,000 entries and exits were recorded through the city’s checkpoints, the Immigration Department said. Of these, more than 285,000 were outbound travellers.
The highest number of entries, more than 54,000 people, was recorded at Lo Wu.
Hongkongers appear to have had little trouble returning home via the seven land border checkpoints. According to real-time data on a new department mobile app, the process at the various checkpoints took less than 30 minutes at about 6.30pm.
Checkpoint data showed that from the first day of Lunar New Year to Monday, the number of entry and exit passengers reached 310,000, and there were 41,000 vehicles, representing increases of 520 per cent and 240 per cent respectively compared with the same holiday period in 2023.
Among them, the total number of inbound passengers reached 184,000, with 24,000 vehicles entering Zhuhai port.
The number of single-plated vehicles from Hong Kong exceeded 8,000 in a single day for the first time, under a scheme brought in last July. The “Northbound Travel for Hong Kong Vehicles” scheme allows Hongkongers to drive into Guangdong province without a mainland licence plate.
The average daily number of visitors during the first three days of the Lunar New Year “golden week” holiday was 167,441, a 226 per cent jump over 2023.
