Hong Kong tourism “freezing”, how to get out of the recession

The world's tourism industry is facing an unprecedented crisis amid a new wave of pneumonia outbreaks. Hong Kong has seen a sharp drop in visitors this year as a new series of pneumonias has hit the city and even the recent Christmas decorations have brought a sense of desolation. Tourism is one of Hong Kong's four pillar industries, employing hundreds of thousands of people. The industry believes that while Hong Kong still has a long way to go to get out of the epidemic, all sectors should take this opportunity to think about how to strengthen the tourism industry and break out quickly after the outbreak.

The impact of the new crown pneumonia on Hong Kong's tourism industry is unprecedented. According to data released by the Hong Kong Tourism Board, the number of visitors to Hong Kong has dropped by more than 90% for 10 consecutive months since February 2020 due to the impact of the Newcastle Pneumonia outbreak. In the first 11 months of this year, the total number of visitors to Hong Kong was 3.564 million, down 93.2 percent year-on-year, including 2.704 million mainland visitors, down 93.5 percent year-on-year.

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In an interview with China News Service, Cheng Ding Yi, director general of the Hong Kong Tourism Board, used the word “frozen” to describe the current situation of tourism in Hong Kong, China. He pointed out that tourism is one of the four pillar industries of Hong Kong's socio-economic management, accounting for about 5% of Hong Kong's GDP and involving a direct and indirect impact on employment of about 800,000 people. Because we do not have a tourist, retail, catering and other tourism product-related technical industries have also been severely impacted, the tourism industry combined with the actual problem suffered incalculable losses.

Ocean Park and Disneyland, two of Hong Kong's iconic theme parks, have been closed three times since January this year due to the epidemic, and both parks have only been open to visitors for about four months this year.

As the Hong Kong SAR government launched several rounds of funding measures, Hong Kong travel agencies did not close on a large scale for the time being. Yao Si-wing, a member of the Hong Kong SAR Legislative Council's tourism sector, told China News Service that the term “painful” to sum up the Hong Kong tourism industry in 2020 is not too much. The industry has stagnated and there is still no “dawn”. The SAR government's support for the industry is clear, but ultimately, we must work hard to “clean up” the local confirmed cases and resume normal people-to-people and economic exchanges with the mainland as soon as possible.

In fact, the SAR Government has long planned to launch a “tourism bubble” in the hope of resuming cross-border tourism within the limited time available before the global epidemic has completely disappeared. Initially, Hong Kong and Singapore could “form a bloc” and the fourth epidemic in Hong Kong would have to be stopped.

However, the Hong Kong tourism industry believes that it should use this time to think deeply about how to further enhance the quality of Hong Kong's tourism industry through innovative methods and perfect mechanisms, to better develop Hong Kong's human resources, and to achieve multi-faceted and in-depth integration of culture and tourism for the future development of Hong Kong's tourism industry, including in-depth discussions on how to apply new technologies such as blockchain and 5g to the tourism industry, bringing more possibilities for the integration of culture and tourism.

Leung Fong-yuen, Chairman of the Hong Kong Tourist Practitioners Association, said that in addition to the financial support from the SAR government, tourism practitioners are also learning from their painful experiences, hoping to find a new path of development by thinking and making up for their own shortcomings. Many tourism practitioners are now trying to do “cloud tourism”, which means making their own videos or short videos and posting them on social media. However, relevant industry associations are also offering courses to teach guides how to make good videos and attract viewers.

The epidemic will eventually pass and spring will come, but what is needed is to prepare students for new opportunities during the “freeze” period. Hong Kong Cultural Tourism Economic Development Bureau (HKTB) Chairman Pang Yiu-kai expects that the global ecotourism industry will lead to a reshuffle, various countries and regional cities and future work will strive for tourists to re-visit, so the future of the international competitiveness of the tourism industry will have a very intense impact. After the epidemic receded, Hong Kong as a tourist product market demand will be mainly short-haul, the future should focus on developing high value-added conference, exhibition and incentive travel services market, and to develop the Greater Bay Area “multi-destination” tourism management model.

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