Hong Kong’s tourism minister has slammed a political commentator’s “fallacious” assertion that the city’s tourism policy had driven out high-value establishments and yielded weak economic returns.
Citing tourism figures, Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Kevin Yeung said more than 760,000 tourists from mainland China crossed the border in Hong Kong over the Labour Day “Golden Week,” with more than 190,000 visiting on May 2, marking a record high for single-day arrivals this year
“This has brought business to the tourism sector and other related industries, and though not every business has been able to benefit, we understand that those trades are generally satisfied,” he said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
The tourism chief also hit back at the assertion that the government policy of pandering to low spenders from mainland China was not a cost-effective strategy, and would drive out “good money” in Hong Kong.
‘Fallacies’
“These are all fallacies. We all know that every 1.5 million tourists bring a 0.1 per cent increase to Hong Kong’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and this Golden Week has brought in more than HK$2 billion to Hong Kong” he said without naming the author of the piece, nor the newspaper it was published in.
Yeung also said the authorities were aware of new tourism trends of “conscious spending” and “citywalks” – referring to prudency and new modes of travel among young mainland Chinese in the post-pandemic era.
The arguments singled out by Yeung were made in an opinion piece penned by scholar and political commentator Derek Yuen in local paper Ming Pao.
Over the Labour Day Golden Week, most mainland tourists were not shopping, and would go so far as to save on the cost of a cup of coffee – an indication that the government’s tourism policy was a wasted effort, Yuen said.
“The economic returns have been meagre, which makes one wonder: who is [the government] working so hard for?” he said, citing former chief executive Leung Chun-ying’s earlier remark that appealing to low spenders in Hong Kong, an upmarket tourist destination, was a bad fit.
Hong Kong has been facing an uphill battle to reinvigorate its tourism sector after it reopened its borders last March following the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tourism strategy
While the number of mainland tourists has recovered more rapidly than international visitors, spending among daytrippers has gone down 73.5 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2018.
Yuen argued that the government’s policy of “pandering” to mainland tourists in order to retain their patronage by any means possible “only gives the impression that there is no bottom line.”
Basing the city’s tourism strategy on trends popularised on Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu would only bring in “bad money” from low spenders, resulting in a “paradoxical” phenomenon whereby high-value establishments are driven out, he argued.
The city needed to play to its strengths, for instance by promoting its Michelin-starred restaurants and cocktail bars, many of which are among Asia’s 50 Best Bars, Yuen said. “These are achievements that other places can only envy, and yet we don’t see the government paying any attention to them or developing strategies.”
A more serious and far-reaching problem for the tourism industry is that Hong Kong is gradually losing its identity, Yuen said. “That would be a path of no return, of degradation.”
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