January boom spurs rosier tourism hopes

Marcus Lum

A surge to new highs in both the number of monthly visitors and mainland tourists since the pandemic ended have left Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Rosanna Law Shuk-pui with the feeling that Hong Kong is "full of opportunities."

Speaking at a Legislative Council panel meeting yesterday, Law said 4.74 million visitors arrived last month, with around 3.73 million coming over from the mainland, marking annual increases of 24 and 25 percent, respectively.

Nearly 1.25 million visitors arrived during the Lunar New Year golden week.

"Of these, over 1.06 million were mainlanders and more than 180,000 were non-mainlanders, while the overall hotel occupancy rate was 90 percent," Law said.

"In terms of mainland tour groups, over 2,000 visited during the Golden Week, with more than 440 arriving on the third day."

This set a single-day record for the highest number of mainland tour groups.

Queues of outbound tourists were at the West Kowloon high-speed rail station as the mainland's golden week holiday came to an end yesterday.

The Immigration Department said border crossings saw around 478,000 crossings by 4pm yesterday.

Of these, 220,000 were departures, with 63,500 being mainlanders.

The crossings also saw 257,500 arrivals, with around 137,000 being Hong Kong residents.

Travel Industry Council executive director Fanny Yeung Shuk-fan said the over 2,100 mainland tour groups that visited from January 29 to Monday brought in more than 76,000 tourists, 70 percent of whom were overnight visitors.

A family of eight from Hangzhou said they spent HK$100,000 in their six days here but noted with regret that popular attractions like Disneyland and The Peak were congested.

A tourist from Hangzhou, who visited Guangzhou, Macau and Hong Kong over five days with his wife, said they followed recommendations from mainland social media platforms for popular spots to visit.

He expressed interest in exploring Japan or South Korea in the future.

A tourist from Sichuan brought her children here to experience the Lunar New Year atmosphere here, which she found vibrant.

She spent a few thousand dollars during her four-day stay and considered the overall outlay reasonable and said she would want to come back for a longer holiday to take in more attractions.