Tst rises in retail stakes as causeway Bay loses top spot

Hong Kong has lost its place for having the world's most-expensive retail district after rents plummeted due to Covid curbs and restrictions on visitors, a survey showed.

Manhattan's Upper Fifth Avenue is now the priciest street by rents globally for shopping, according to the first annual survey since 2019 by commercial property firm Cushman & Wakefield.

Tsim Sha Tsui comes second, followed by Italy's Via Montenapoleone in Milan.

Annual rents in TST fell 41 percent to US$1,436 (HK$11,200) per square foot compared to the pre-pandemic levels while rents on Upper Fifth Avenue went up by 14 percent to US$2,000 per sq ft.

Mainland sportswear maker Li Ning this year reportedly leased an over 7,000 sq ft shop on Canton Road in TST for HK$2 million monthly, 70 percent lower than the peak, according to local media.

Hong Kong is struggling with a downturn after some of the world's strictest Covid measures and the closed border with the mainland slashed the number of visitors.

It saw just 330,000 arrivals in the first 10 months of the year, compared with 3.3 million in October alone in 2019 and 5.9 million in the same month in 2018, according to the Hong Kong Tourism Board.

Travelers from the mainland stood at about 250,000 from January to October, compared with 44 million for the whole of 2019, according to official data.

While Hong Kong has removed its most onerous pandemic curbs recently, including hotel quarantine and flight bans, visitors are still subject to a series of restrictions and tests.

The Hong Kong dollar's peg to the US dollar, however, has helped the city maintain its ranking position in 2022 as other currencies have weakened to the greenback, the survey said.

London's New Bond Street slid one place to fourth, with average rents down 11 percent, while the Avenue des Champs Elysees in Paris came in fifth after they fell an average of 18 percent.

TST overtook Causeway Bay as the city's most-expensive retail district, according to the survey, which tracks the top retail districts across 92 cities and ranks the priciest by prime rental value.

Causeway Bay held the world's top spot in 2018 when it displaced Upper Fifth Avenue for the first time in five years.

Despite the fall in rents, TST and Causeway Bay still ranked the top and second as the priciest retail district by rent in the Asia-Pacific. TST's main shopping streets were still 52 percent above Ginza in Tokyo, which ranks third.

Overall, average rents in Asia dropped by 17 percent because of border closures while the Americas were the most resilient region at 15 percent above pre-pandemic levels, largely thanks to the United States.